Of all the wars in U.S. History, which did we absolutely have to fight?

[ringmastery]

Revolutionary War
World War II

Any others?

I'm not sure the Civil War was required. The north could have just let the south secede.

[DrWeird]

1. Well, yes, we could have just let the south secede.

And we could have let Hitler conquer Europe and we could have paid high taxes to England.

[Prodemsouth]

2. Yeah, What the hell lets just keep slavery going.

n/t

[ringmastery]

4. we didn't fight the civil war because of slavery

[Prodemsouth]

9. It was one of the major reasons- historical revisionism strikes again.

If it were not then why were the slaves "free" after the war.

[DrWeird]

13. Is Birth of a Nation an educational film in certain parts of the US?

I mean really, where are people getting this crap?

[mulethree]

15. to break the economic power of the southern aristocracy n/t

[Prodemsouth]

17. And southern aristocracy was based on what. Why break the southern

aristocracy in the first place?

[DrWeird]

18. And what institution was responsible for the economic power...

of southern aristocracy?

A. Slavery.
B. Southern Charm.
C. The Supremacy of the white race.
D. None of the above.

[Yupster]

19. Well Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri were slave states

They fought for the Union. So there must have been something more going on than slavery.

And just as an aside, not all the slaves were free after the war.

In the former Confederate states the slaves were freed, but in the northern slave states, the slaves didn't get freed for another eight months when the Thirteenth Amendment took effect on Jan 1 1866.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

28. Correct answer, and a good reminder that winners...

...write the history books regardless of the facts.

[Prodemsouth]

30. They were freed less than a year! The states you mentioned were more

marginal slave states compared to the deep south.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

39. A slave state is a slave state regardless of the numbers involved.

[Prodemsouth]

40. No problem with that, it is true. But they were not as dependent on the

slavery institution as much as the deep south which may help explain why they were in the union.

[Yupster]

41. North Carolina wasn't nearly as dependant

on slavery as the deep southern states either, yet North Carolina lost more men than any other state.

[JVS]

47. Not to mention that they were border states

making them poorly situated to secede without being crushed.

It is no coincidence that the first states to secede were in the deep south and that Virginia joined later.

[TN al]

54. Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri??????

Hmmm Missouri was voting to secede when General Nathaniel Lyon chased the legislature and governor out of the capitol.

Maryland was voting to seceed when Lincoln sent troops to arrest the legislature.

Delaware would have been completely cut off from the rest of the confederacy if they had seceeded (real smart move there)

and Kentucky declared themselves neutral (real strong union sympathies there). By the time Kentucky was ready to secede it was so full of union troops it could not.

Is this the something more you were alluding too?

[Yupster]

55. All four of those states

provided many more troops to the Union side than to the Confederate side.

When Lee invaded Maryland in 1862, a proclamation was issued calling Maryland into the Confederacy. Only a handful of men responded.

The same thing happened in Kentucky when Bragg's offensive brought wagon loads of extra rifles for the thousands of Kentuckians who were expected to rally to the Confederate cause. Again, it didn't happen.

Also, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee didn't secede when the deep southern states did. Lincoln's election, and any perceived threat to slavery did not cause them to leave. In fact, Tennessee voters voted against even calling a secession convention.

It was only after Lincoln's incredible blunder demanding troops from those states to invade the south that those states were forced off the fence and chose to join the Confederacy rather than invade their fellow states.

[TN al]

63. The errors in you ascertations...

... are numerous and frankly your southern apologist posts are beginning to bore me. Clearly you have never been to Kentucky (their civil war monuments are mostly to confederates) Thousands of extra rifles to Kentuckians??? maybe if Bragg had passed them around the south wouldn't have had a chronic weapon shortage. Tennessee had strong union support in the east and formed units for the north.

While checking my facts on secession (Arkansas seceeded at the same time as NC VA and TN and MO seceeded on OCT 31, 1861) it occurred to me that it makes no difference you are just going to interpret the facts to support whatever pre-conceived notion you already have and make up what you cant twist the facts to say. HMMM what other group of people does this?

[Yupster]

64. There were many Confederate soldiers

from Kentucky. I'm sure there are many monuments to them too. In fact, the VP of the USA John Breckinridge was a Kentuckian who served with the Confederacy.

However, the fact remains that many more Kentuckians served with the Union than the Confederacy. Majority opinion in Kentucky and all four of those states were pro-Union.

There's no doubt that there was a split in those four states, but in my opinion, you exaggerate Confederate support in them. It was no where near majority. My best evidence would be which side the men voted on. When it came to picking up a rifle and putting on a uniform, most voted to put on the blue instead of the gray.

As far as boring you, as a former college history instructor who taught the Civil War for 10 years, I fear you're probably not the first person who's ever said that about me.

As far as secessions go, I think Arkansas was going to secede regardless. It was just a time delay problem with them. Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee were not at all sure things though. I believe a vigorous public relations campaign by Lincoln during his lame duck four months and early presidency could have kept them in the Union. That would have been a tremendous accomplishment as they are three of the four largest Confederate states population-wise. Instead, Lincoln never ventured into the wavering states until the war was on. I believe this was a serious mistake.

[mulethree]

11. because the republicans took over congress? n/t

[TN al]

14. Yeah right...

...it was little enders vs. big enders as I recall

[ThomWV]

52. Thank Goodness Someone Understands That Slavery Had Very Little To Do With

The civil war. It was fought over trade policy, no more and no less. The issue of slavery, which was rapidly becomming a nonissue by 1860, had very little to do with it.

[Bridget Burke]

53. Was slavery a non-issue for the slaves?

Besides, didn't the Southerners fire the first shots?

Something about Fort Sumter....

[Euphen]

60. As Karl Marx pointed out at the time . . .

the war had very little to do with trade, and everything to do with slavery. The same arguments used by revisionists today were used in Marx's own time. He refutes these arguments in his 1861 article "The North American Civil War."

"The war between North and South -- so runs the first excuse -- is a mere tariff war, a war between a protectionist system and a free trade system, and Britain naturally stands on the side of free trade. Shall the slave-owner enjoy the fruits of slave labour in their entirety or shall he be cheated of a portion of these by the protectionists of the North? That is the question which is at issue in this war. It was reserved for The Times to make this brilliant discovery. The Economist, The Examiner, The Saturday Review and tutti quanti expounded the theme further. It is characteristic of this discovery that it was made, not in Charleston, but in London. Naturally, in America everyone knew that from 1846 to 1861 a free trade system prevailed, and that Representative Morrill carried his protectionist tariff through Congress only in 1861, after the rebellion had already broken out. Secession, therefore, did not take place because the Morrill tariff had gone through Congress, but, at most, the Morrill tariff went through Congress because secession had taken place. When South Carolina had its first attack of secession in 1831, the protectionist tariff of 1828 served it, to be sure, as a pretext, but only as a pretext, as is known from a statement of General Jackson. This time, however, the old pretext has in fact not been repeated. In the Secession Congress at Montgomery all reference to the tariff question was avoided, because the cultivation of sugar in Louisiana, one of the most influential Southern states, depends entirely on protection . . .

"The whole movement was and is based, as one sees, on the slave question. Not in the sense of whether the slaves within the existing slave states should be emancipated outright or not, but whether the twenty million free men of the North should submit any longer to an oligarchy of three hundred thousand slaveholders; whether the vast Territories of the republic should be nurseries for free states or for slavery; finally, whether the national policy of the Union should take armed spreading of slavery in Mexico, Central and South America as its device."

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/10/25.htm

For more articles on the civil war by Marx:

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/us-civil-war/index.htm

To say that "slavery . . . was rapidly becoming a nonissure by 1860" is innacurate, to say the least, when bleeding Kansas was only five years past.

[wuushew]

7. Slavery seems to have died out mostly in the rest of the world

perhaps forces other than military/legal might have contributed to its decline?

[Prodemsouth]

12. I can't believe I just read that at DU

n/t

[DrWeird]

16. The holocaust would have ended pretty quickly too.

In fact they were almost done.

[Prodemsouth]

22. A tragic nervous LOL, DrWeird, good to see some sanity here

edit: wrong word see not seem. I am going to leave this baby with ya. I am out of here!

[wuushew]

27. Please note I supported WW2 as a legitimate war

but lets not fool ourselves, the American public did not decide to declare war on the Third Reich because of an overwhelming concern for European Jewry but rather an appeal to national self interest. That being said WW2 was the "perfect war" because by fighting it we seemed to have spread democracy that replaced fascism/totalitarianism, increased our economic well being and prevented the complete genocides of various peoples across Europe all at a cost in human lives much less than if the war had been allowed to continue.

Not many wars can make that claim

[Media_Lies_Daily]

38. Let's back up the truck, okay?....

First off, we got into WWII because we were attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor. Japan, Germany and Italy were military partners, and that allowed us to declare war on Germany when we declared war on Japan.

By the way, Pearl Harbor was not the simple Japanese "surprise attack" that we have all learned throughout our schooling. That was also a LIHOP because the Navy had broken the Japanese codes well before the attack on Pearl Harbor. That's why none of our carriers were in port on December 7, 1941.

Additionally, while we were supposedly spreading Democracy, etc., the Soviets were spreading Communism over a much larger part of the world's population.

As to your comment about WWII being a "perfect war", I'd be willing to bet that the 50-60 million dead would have very different thoughts about that.

[Yupster]

42. So FDR LIHOP'ed Pearl Harbor?

or was the BFEE somehow involved? Just so I can keep my conspiracies straight.

[aquart]

35. Well, of course.

If you own a worker, you have to feed him for life, even when he's too old to work.

If you just hire a worker, you can kick him out if he gets sick or old. Many employers spotted the advantage. But then the workers organized and spoiled the fun.

[Abe Linkman]

3. The only ones honor required us to "fight"

War on Poverty

War on Ignorance

War on Intolerance

War on Right-wing Ideas

[wuushew]

5. Only WW2, the Revolutionary War was optional

Canadian or Australian style self government would have emerged.

[Atlanticist]

45. Completely agree with you there -

I'd like to say that if you'd not fought the Revolutionary war,at least Bush wouldn't be your President, but wait, you'd have Tony Blair as your PM !!

Mind you, at least Blair is a true Social Democrat domestically - you should see my tax bill. For a laugh, I'd love to ask Blair what he thinks of Bush's fiscal policy, given his is the exact opposite.

On WWII, the US absolutely had to enter - Britain was left pretty much alone, and though the US had a strong German/Irish lobby domestically who didn't want to enter the war on the side of Britain, Pearl Harbour forced your hand - just in time for Churchill and the rest is history.

Don't know much about the Korean war and what it was all about ?

[madaboutharry]

6. I think the Civil War was

necessary. Slavery would most likely still exist in Alabama!

[Ysabel]

26. still exists - just about everywhere - n/t..

[Yupster]

8. WW II only mandatory war in our history

All others were our choice.

[Renew Deal]

10. A couple

Revolutionary War by default. You can't count that. You have to make the assumption that without it, there wouldn't be a US.

War of 1812.
Civil War (if you wanted to keep the Union)
WWII


I don't think we had to absolutely fight the others. I forget the details of the Spanish american war.

[wuushew]

21. The War of 1812 was a war of choice

The War of 1812 had two main causes: British naval actions on the Atlantic and an American desire to seize Britain's North American colonies.
During the long Napoleonic Wars American merchant ships became home to a number of deserters from the Royal Navy. British warships frequently stopped American ships and removed personnel believed to be deserters. However they also impressed a large number of Americans. Between six to eight thousand Americans were impressed into the Royal Navy at this time. The most violent incident of impressment was when the British warship Leopard opened fire on the American Chesapeake, which had refused to stop. A number of seamen were killed and wounded aboard the Chesapeake.

Britain also attempted to restrict American trade with France. They imposed tariffs and stopped any ships containing military supplies. France attempted to do the same, but its weaker navy caused less of a problem for the U.S. In 1807, President Thomas Jefferson signed a bill which banned all trade with the warring parties, hoping this would so damage them that they would be forced to negotiate. This failed to work, and the bill was repealed in 1808. Britain continued its impressment and restrictions, however and President Madison asked Congress to declare war on June 1, 1812; Congress declared war on June 18. Ironically, before war had been declared Parliament had already decided to end impressment and remove the trade restrictions, but the message was still in transit when the U.S. declared war.

Other Americans had different reasons for wanting war. Many thought that it was finally time for the US to annex Canada to complete its manifest destiny. Others believed that native unrest in the west was funded and encouraged by the British. Yet another important cause of the war was that 1812 was a presidential election year in which Madison was vulnerable.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812#Causes

[Renew Deal]

37. I forgot about some of that stuff.

Thanks

[starroute]

57. A few more facts about the War of 1812

The extreme War Hawks (yep, that's what they called them) wanted to declare war on both England and France, in hopes of peeling off as much territory as possible while they were busy fighting each other. Going to war with England alone was a compromise position.

The British felt stabbed in the back by us. They were fighting against a tyrant, Napoleon, and didn't understand why America would want to make things harder for them.

The issue of impressment was also a problematic one. In those days, the processes of naturalization were not well developed, and if you could pay a few people to swear they'd known you since childhood, you could acquire proofs of American citizenship. Many of the sailors impressed by the British were hiding under fake proofs of this sort.

At the conclusion of the war, not an inch of territory had changed hands between the US and Britain. The only American gain was the conquest of Mobile, Alabama from Britain's ally, Spain.

[buycitgo]

20. Grenada!

ha

[JohnOneillsMemory]

23. THE WAR ON POVERTY n/t

[JVS]

24. These

1812-The existence of the state was in danger

Civil war- Once the federal government starts allowing secession where does it end? Would have eventually destroyed the country. We could have possibly survived a loss, but to not fight it at all would have destroyed the US government.

On edit: By necessary I mean necessary for the self preservation of the government. Thus the Revolutionary war doesn't qualify because there was no government to have falter.

[Yupster]

43. I disagree on both

the Civil War or War of 1812. Neither were mandatory.

[JVS]

49. The federal govenrment would have been destroyed by allowing..

secession. It would have totally sapped it of any authority.

In 1812 we could have been reconquered.

[wildmanj]

25. necessary

MAKE LOVE NOT WAR :P

[leftofthedial]

29. Revolutionary War

Civil War

WWII

and the Invasion of Grenada, of course. ;-)

[TreasonousBastard]

31. Watchoo mean "absolutely"?

We did not "absolutely" have to fight any of the 200 or so wars and expeditions we've been involved in since 1776. many of them had "good" reasons, though, to some people. Not good enough to others.

In some of them we were attacked and fought back, like 1812 and WWII. Some had some moral authority, like Korea. Some had territorial ambitions, like all of the Indian wars, Spanish -American War, Mexican War. Some were economic expeditions, like many of our adventures in Central America and the fleet threatening Tokyo harbor. Some were police actions, like going after the Barbary pirates.

Most had some combination of these reasons.

Very few were justified in the eyes of Just War doctrine.
Most of them, with a few exceptions like WWI, were considered justified by their positive political or economic effects on the US.

Or not, depending upon whom you ask.

[Deja Q]

32. Wrong about WW II, and why not include WW I?

We didn't seem to give a fuck about WW II until AFTER we were attacked. Not even by Germany, but by Japan. And there's a lot of :tinfoilhat: about what led us into WW II also...

My history's also off, I should check to see how Hitler, Mousolinni, and the Japanese leader decided to team up to become their axis... it seemed that, of the Big Three, they'd eventually have to take over the other two. Evil's a bit dumb in that respect...

All I know is, the US doesn't give a frick about the rest of the world unless there's something it NEEDS/WANTS.

The Revolutionary War is an indisputable war that was necessary.

[PfcHammer]

33. War on Drugs, naturally

[jason_au]

62. War on drugs

Just so long as it starts with the drugs which kill the most people: alcohol and tobacco.

Oh wait! You can make a profit from those! Therefore they must be OK....

Cheers,

Jason

[aquart]

34. No, we could not have let the south secede.

That would have been an invitation for other countries to walk in and start bidding and grabbing for territory. Also, any time any area had a dispute, it would have been tradition to walk out, secede, set up on your own. We would have been Europe before the EU: tariffs, passports, different money, different laws, different languages, WAR.

We fought the Civil War to avoid the Hundred Years War.

[Yupster]

44. Why couldn't it just be like

Canada and the US? We seem to get along okay.

[JVS]

50. The federal government would never have survived it

[troublemaker]

36. Civil yes, Revolutionary no

Our revolution was just a misunderstanding--hardly anybody going into it expected or even wanted independence, just a better deal. If we had speed-of-light communications back then a settlement would have been negotiated short of independence. (Washington lead a toast to George III at dinner every night well into the war.)

The Civil War was not optional. It was assumed that England (the world's biggest cotton user) would eventually side with the south and that the US wouldn't survive long-term, being trapped between Canada and the Confederacy.

[Yupster]

46. US trapped between the CSA and Canada?

And how could England have survived all these years when it's been trapped between Scotland and Wales?

[troublemaker]

51. Reading is fundemental. Try it.

[Van Helsing]

48. I believe the Civil War needed to be fought...

as well as the Revolutionary War (obviously) and WWII.

My reasoning for the Civil War is because the slaves needed to be free. Nobody ever deserves to be a slave for anyone, no matter what the circumstances are.

[TexasMexican]

56. Revolutionary War and WWII Pacific Theater.

Obviously the Revolutionary War because without it the US would never have existed.

I dont think we had to fight Nazi Germany, it was definately in our best interest to fight them though.

We probably could have just fought the Japanese and come to some sort of peace with Nazi Germany.

I think the US would probably still exist in that scenerio, however it definately never would have become a superpower and of course Nazi Germany would have.

Makes for interesting fiction anyways.

[Yupster]

58. The Book Fatherland

pretty much goes with your scenario. Excellent read. A murder mystery set in Nazi occupied Europe in the Sixties if I remember right.

[TexasMexican]

61. I saw the movie.

on HBO a while back. I thought it was pretty interesting, I'm sure the book is better though.

Also while perusing Barnes and Nobles I saw that Harry Turtledove put out a similar looking book, set in present times I believe with Nazi Germany around. I dont remember the title though.

[Yupster]

65. The Book Fatherland

has a different, and IMO better ending than the movie.

Turtledove's World War series is a fun read. It supposes a Lizard invasion from outer space at the height of WWII. It's a fun read, but start from the beginning as it gets weaker as it goes on.

The Lizard Fleetlord, Avtar, to me is the most sympathetic character in the series..

[pinto]

59. the Revolutionary War, w/o that we'd still be England's colony.

Some may say that's not a bad thing, and they would have some good points, I'm sure. But the development of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were worth it, imho.

[Yupster]

66. Canada, Australia

are no longer English colonies. Why would you think we would still be?