Pat Buchanan: ‘Both sides were right’ in the Civil War

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Did conservative commentator Pat Buchanan cross a line when he appeared to defend slavery during a debate on MSNBC's Hardball?

That's the question political observers are asking after Buchanan told a panel he believed "both sides were right" in the Civil War.

The comment came during a discussion of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell's omission of the issue of slavery in a proclamation reinstating Confederate History Month in the state. Buchanan argued that McDonnell was right to ignore slavery because that wasn't the core issue that prompted Virginia to leave the Union and join the Confederacy.

"Virginia did not secede over slavery," Buchanan said. "Virginia stayed in the union when Lincoln was elected. ... What took them out of the Union was when Abraham Lincoln said, We want 75,000 volunteers, your militia and your soldiers in Virginia, to attack the deep South and bring them back into the union. They said, We're not going to kill our kinsmen. That's how Virginia left the union."

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0409/buchanan-both-sides-civil-war/

[Bandit]

1. They said, We're not going to kill our kinsmen.

They had no problem "killing their kinsmen" from Washington DC or other States north of the Mason dixon line...

[Cary]

2. Exactly almost what I was thinking when I saw Buchanan.

They wouldn't kill people who seceded from the Union for the sake of the Union, but they would kill people loyal to the Union for fighting against the notion of secession?

???

And killing Northerners was somehow honorable?

I guess they will say anything to avoid the fact that they were fighting to preserve the institution of slavery.

[blueworld]

3. Lawd, I hate to even remotely agree with Patster but...

I've said before & will re-state that I'm supremely disgusted with the immature & dishonest attitude of "North all good" "South all bad" south bashing. It's an ego-trip that should die a quick death along with the Confederate Flag.

McDonnell is an immature whiny turnip. Unfortunately, he is temporarily my governor. The proclamation should be (if anything) a Civil War History month, however I will be enormously grateful if the Blue States openly & vocally recognize that the North had slaves as well as the South. Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass were all born into slavery in Northern or "border" states.

The black soldiers in the Union Army were paid less than the white soldiers. The Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in Confederate States - not in the North. Harriet Tubman wasn't a bit impressed with Honest Abe Lincoln until the end of her life.

There isn't a state in this union that can bask in the glow of their Human/Civil Rights record from our treatment of Native Americans through the Irish/European/Jewish immigrants of the last 100 years & even up to the present warm welcome of the Mexican immigrants. When NJ emancipated the slaves they took the vote away from blacks. When NY emancipated their slaves, they kept the children "indentured" for 25 years.

Let's have an end to this BS, shall we? Do the hard research & gather the real facts.

Men like McDonnell are scum - they are not the essence of the South. Disclaimer: I'm a hybrid & the first Klan rally I ever saw in my life was in NW New Jersey by a group from PA.

Let's get rid of the bigots regardless of state, creed, party etc. and stop using the Civil War as fuel for a Blue State ego-trip. And please stop making me appear to agree with Buchanan. It's painful.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

6. What, exactly was the Confederacy "right" about?

We've established that both sides were wrong about things, and the Union army was right about ending slavery. What was the Confederacy right about?

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. The right to withdraw from the Union, probably.

Especially in light of post-WWII international law regarding self-determination as a basis of nationhood. You can't agree with the idea of self-determination on the one hand and turn around and say the Southern states had no right of secession for any reason, full stop, on the other.

And then there are also the economic issues; the Southern states were right that their largely agrarian economies were negatively affected by tariffs designed to benefit Northern industrialisation (at a time when Britain was the world's dominant industrial power and British goods were both cheaper and higher quality than comparable American ones).

The South was wrong about slavery, but slavery was secondary in any event (the war like all wars was about economics; the border states that stayed in the Union were exempt from the Emancipation Proclamation, and Lincoln would have been happy to see the Union restored without freeing a single slave, and said as much himself).

[SemiCharmedQuark]

22. Southern states explicitly said they were seceding because of slavery.

Declarations of Secessions. All of them list slavery as the reason for secession.

This bullhockey about "tariffs" is after the fact nonsense.

[blueworld]

12. They weren't. What was "the North" right about?

The southern states thought they had the right to keep the Federal Government out of their business. Their "business" was founded on the evil of slavery. They were wrong. That's not my point.

"The North" thought they had the mandate to keep the country "united". And men died on both sides because of that. I don't believe the horrors & deaths are irrelevant in any war, regardless of "right or wrong".

My point is that the error of slavery was happily & profitably perpetrated in the North. And I'm sick of the "South" being branded, denigrated, trashed & spit upon because of that wrong. How many hundreds of years of hard work & penance must "The South" do before they can be accepted as "worthy"????

McDonnell is not "The South". Let's attack the behavior of individuals & get over the freakin' Civil War.

[Solomon]

18. The South will have to keep paying pennace until they frigging admit

they were wrong and that they lost. They earned the crap spewed on them. What's so hard to see about that? Friggin' traitors.

That was a hell of a "wrong" and they deserve to be branded denigrated trashed and spit upon, especially when they keep it up.

I'm sick of it too. But clearly not for the same reasons that you are.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

23. Slavery was abolished in most of the North

You can argue that this was done because northern economies were industrial while southern economies were agricultural- doesn't change the facts. Most importantly, there is no "Union Heritage Month". When a northern state establishes one, feel free to complain that the south is being picked on. But in this case, Virginia's governor chose to dig up the Civil War and in doing so all that comes with it.

[Ter]

28. That the Federal Government is out of control?

I dunno, I like the 10 Amendment.

[MadHound]

8. I don't think that most folks around here think that the North was all good,

However the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of slaves were held in Southern states, and that the Southern states broke from the Union over one big issue, namely slavery. They essentially committed treason in order to hold fellow human beings in bondage. That is a big ethical no-no.

And yes, there was, and is racism in the North as well as the South. But I think what gets to most people about the South is that the South (not all Southerners) wants to continue in their "glorious lost cause" to the point of being ridiculous, McDonnel being just the latest example.

Worse yet, it seems as though the culture and morals of the South have infected large parts of this country as a whole. One has but to look at Southern sports such as NASCAR, religions like the Southern Baptists, and cultural icons such as the Rebel flag to see that Southern culture has infected this country as a whole, and frankly that is truly not a good thing.

This isn't bigotry, this isn't a Blue state ego trip. I live in a border state, with ancestors who fought on both sides of the Civil War. What I find sad, disgusting and horrible about this is that all the worst about Southern culture, Southern pride is being spread through the country and it is being used to hold this country back from progressing. I'm tired of having Southern evangelical religion determining what goes in my school's textbooks, I'm tired of Southern racism and bigotry infecting my state, I'm tired of stupid Southern secession talk being rehashed again and again, I'm tired of Southern culture infecting my nation. Let the South die and let us make progress beyond such bullshit, together, as one country.

[blueworld]

11. I ask you to review your use of the word "Southern" & that term "the South" as if we were all alike

Did young men from the South die & suffer in that war? Are all "Southern culture & morals" disgusting? None from the North? Are all the fringe groups Southern? Are you aware of the "Southern" men who fought for the Union? Is the Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas "Southern"?

The South broke from the Union over their perceived right to conduct their business independently of the Federal Government. Their "business" was predicated on slavery; it existed in the North as well. Look to this day at black children in "Inner Cities" like Compton & Harlem & Camden. Do you blame Lincoln for that?

My premise is that the dilettantes review headlines of a few newspapers, but don't do the hard vigorous research to discover that bigotry & racism are & have always been as much a vestige of the North as the South. The dividers still spew. "The South" is a term used by "The North" to define "The enemy" of the Civil War Years.

Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center is a part of "southern culture". As is Jimmy Carter & Martin Luther King, Jr. What exhausts you (understandably) is ignorance of some people here. I ask you & others to stop attributing that ignorance & bigotry to the "South" as if it were endemic here & nowhere else. Are you all the same?

My parents always taught me that when I "hated" a group, it was prejudice. Prejudice is based on fear & ignorance. Research & you will find the jewels of "The South".

Women in this country could never have gotten the vote if men didn't grant it to them. President Barack Obama could not have become the first black President of the U.S. if a significant number of white Americans & southern Americans didn't vote for him.

Stop dredging up the horrors of the past to justify attacks of the present, particularly since "The North" was as guilty. Is slavery only abominable depending on how many slaves you own? Why did the black Union soldiers earn less than the whites if their service & sacrifice was as valuable?

The South is not the Klan or the bigots. The South has contributed mightily to the U.S. McDonnell is not the "South" - he's an opportunistic immature idiot who's trying to appeal to a scummy segment of his state.

Stop pissing on "the South" & "Southern culture" because of the scum contained herein. Unless you have no scum contained in your pristine area.

Edited a spelling error.

[MadHound]

15. You are a bundle of contradictions, aren't you.

You want me to accept Northern racism and failures (which I do), yet you reject Southern racism and failures, such as McDonnel, as not being Southern. Hypocrite much?

You want me to stop dredging up horrors from the past, well then let us have the South stop dredging up the "lost cause" like it is some noble, honorable thing.

The North does and has had problems with racism, no doubt. But the difference is the North doesn't celebrate such problems, nor try to spread the mindset that leads to such problems.

The South is jazz and mint julips, catfish and hush puppies. It is also slavery and racism, Jim Crow and Little Rock. If it hadn't been for Southern bigotry, there would have been no Bloody Sunday, no Dr. King.

You don't want to take the good with the bad, yet you urge me to do just that. I have no problem recognizing doing so, why do you?

[DatManFromNawlins]

24. If it wouldn't have been for Northern bigotry...

... there'd have been no slavery in this country in the first place.

The North established their colonies, built them upon the backs of slaves, got a sufficient population and financial resources, and the declared that since they didn't need slaves economically anymore, then nobody else did either. The slaves weren't emancipated because it was the right thing to do, they were emancipated because it was an economic weapon against the Southern states. Likewise, while the confederate states at the time listed slavery as a large reason for their rebellion, the simple fact of the matter is that slavery is what drove their economic engine, much like it was in the North in decades prior.

Under no circumstances would the North have abolished slavery if they still relied on it as much as the South did.

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. If you don't with to appear to agree with Buchanan, there is an obvious solution.

DON'T AGREE WITH BUCHANAN.

The ONLY reason the south seceded was over slavery. Lincoln had stated he didn't want to see slavery extended into any of the new territories, and if the south did not get new slave states its political power would be naturally diminished. Rather than find a way to accommodate, they seceded. There was NO other issue over which the south would secede.

It has nothing to do with slavery in the north (which had been abolished in ALL the northern states well before the war, with grandfather clauses in a few; there was a continually diminishing number of slaves still held, but it was illegal to buy, sell, or trade them. The border states were NOT "the north").

It has nothing to do with the Klan in the north - the Klan exists in ALL states, but only the south claims it as part of its heritage. Only in the south is Nathan Bedford Forrest considered a hero for organizing the first Klan and honored with statues.

"Heritage" is bullshit - the south was, continued to be, and still is WRONG.

And I will continue to bash the south so long as morons continue to defend the Confederacy.

[Toasterlad]

21. So...Instead of "North Good, South Bad", You want "South Bad, NORTH JUST AS BAD!"

Which would be a fine point, if one of the Northern states had proposed a "Non-Confederate History Month". Or, indeed, if any of the Northern states make any kind of effort to keep nostalgia for the civil war period alive in any fashion.

Unfortunately, no Northern state DID propose a "Non-Confederate History Month", and northerns DON'T walk around saying things like "the North will rise again". It was the South that did, and does.

So your point about how the North sucked as much as the South is completely, 100% moot. And a Confederate History Month is the definition of ignorant bigotry.

[Uzybone]

4. Did he cross the line??? Is that a serious fucking question?

Jeebus.

[JaneQPublic]

5. Another Pro-Slavery Republican.

But those GOPers and teabaggers, they love THEIR freedom. (Just not the freedom of person they could be holding in bondage for free labor.)

I can't wait to see their offiical party platform at the next RNC convention.

[Old and In the Way]

7. Pat Buchanon, moral relativist.

Funny how they can dance around the black and white when it suits them...

[hlthe2b]

9. Now that photo is refreshing...

AND to those who worry about rewriting of history---look no further than Buchanan. He uses some lesser known facts to sound credible, but expands it to make some really disgusting conclusions... uggh

[DontTreadOnMe]

13. Can we rename Ronald Reagan Airport to...

William Tecumseh Sherman Airport?

Sherman, one of America's greatest war heroes, returned to the US Army to fight the Civil War, and his service in the "War of Rebellion".


Hey, and Connecticut has proclaimed that this August will be "Redneck History Month"!

[louis-t]

14. And "Dems do it ,toooooooo"

Fucking idiot.

[Walk away]

17. I think it's pretty obvious that Pat has Aspergers.

You have to give MSNBC credit, what with hiring Mika with the frontal lobotomy and Tweety with "restless leg syndrome" they have covered the gamut. Their health insurance premiums must be out of this world.

[Rage Inc.]

19. Buchanan has obviously forgotten "indentured servitude."

Us micks were the first slaves in America! Why Buchanan would even try to defend this shit is beyond me!

[Toasterlad]

20. Seriously....Why Does Anyone Ever Let Buchanan Talk Into a Microphone?

Is it for ratings? Cause I can tell you, I have never once watched a program with Pat Buchanan on it, no matter how many bat-shit crazy things it's reported he's said. What do you media people believe that Pat Buchanan brings to the table?

[Grand Taurean]

25. Pat, your scotch-irish roots are nothing to be proud of.

So stop this nonsense.

[marmar]

26. What else would you expect from Herr Buchanan?

[Canuckistanian]

29. His comments were better in the original German

What an Aschenloch.

[fishwax]

27. Lincoln called for troops because VA's traitorous brethren had already attacked the U.S.

But it's not surprising to hear this kind of comment come from a bigot like Buchanan.