The fact that I get paid to give historical presentations makes me a professional. The North did not go to war to defeat slavery, but the South started a war to preserve it. No matter what your book written way after tha fact may say, the Articles of Secession tell exactly what they were thinking then. Anything else is later revisionism.
Sorry Ranger---I have that book. Let me go dig it out and I'll look that section up.
AH!!! Thats right I thought I was going crazy, I couldnt find it, LOL. thanks brother!
I'm flipping through the pages now. It's a damn fine book titled "The South Was Right!".
Who the aggressor was is who fired the first shot, and whether you count that as Fort Sumter in April or at the Star of the West the January before, it was still the South. And don't give me any garbage about high tariffs or state's rights. Tariffs were lowered before the war started, and the only state's right mentioned in the Articles of Secession was slavery. People can SAY all they want that the south was going to end salvery, but they were always looking for places (Kansas, Missouri) to expand it to. Doesn't sound much like extinction to me. What happened 100 years before (Massachusetts) was not as important to the Civil War as what happened 10 year before (end of Missouri Compromise, bleeding Kansas, fugitive slave laws).
Most of my presentation are inland - Milwaukee, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee - for which I am well paid. You apparently aren't familiar with the importance of the Mississippi Squadron to the US victory if you think only the coasts were important to the Navy. And I am doing the reaearch for those presentations myself - I go to original sources (such as the Articles of Secession and period internal Navy documents) for my information, not later revisionist writings. My degree is for natural AND historical interpretation. My job is to take obscure or complicated information and make it undrestandable to the general public, and that includes historical information. The peole who attend my presentations don't seem to care about history degrees - they just know the presentation is entertaining and accurate.While you may get paid to make presentations and, I'm sure are very passionate in your beliefs, I have to call false advertising here. Most people would expect to see a degree in history (not just a Bachelors in Environmental Interpretation and an MBA, impressive though those might be) in the CV of someone claiming to be a "professional Civil War historian"..
Sorry, no matter the facts, no matter your stance, no matter your re-enacting experience, if you're not doing the research for those presentations, you're not a professional historian, but a professional presenter. You are not being paid for your history, but the presentation itself.
Out of curiosity, how does one do naval reenactments in a land-locked area, or do you travel for those?
True enough.
And no union exists at all if any state, deciding that it doesn't happen to like a turn of events, just up and leaves. That crisis was already upon the Confederacy, as several southern areas had seceeded from the Confederacy. The nullification crisis already established years before that the Federal government would act to protect the Union. That is the sole reason the North responded to Souther aggression (at first)2. The formation of the Confederacy was not solely due to States desiring to act with complete autonomy. We are a nation of States---The UNITED States. Central government is not a problem, when that central government recognizes the sovereignty of the States. When Federal troops were unConstitutionally sent into Virginia, do you think that Virginians should have just accepted it? HELL no. States wanted the Federal Government to act Constitutionally and recognize States' Rights. They failed to do so, and the States took action, as outlined in the principle documents of the United States. The US is a VOLUNTARY union of STATES which SHOULD retain their sovereignty. We all know what will happen if States attempt to remind the Feds AGAIN that they are acting unConstitutionally
The North wanted him first. And Davis put Lee in command only after he lost Johnston.
The Federal government was not empowered to use the draft during the Revolution - it was merely a recommendation to the states. An attempt is not the same as having a draft. The Confederate president Jefferson Davis proposed the first conscription act on March 28, 1862, and the act was passed into law the next month.
The South said it was the cause of the war - that's good enough for me. Revisionism and Lost Cause feelings aside, the facts just don't support your position. If Davis was really working on a plan to end salvery, he would have allowed slaves to serve as soldiers. Didn't happen.
lol. But its very interesting. So keep on bringing on the info. I had no idea about a lot of this, and I even took civil war history in high school 
