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https://www.theguncounter.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=15908
You must read Footfall.Netpackrat wrote:I guess I would have to know what Footfall and Worldwar are to fully get the gist of that.
I just finished this and it is a really fucking outstanding book, filled with lots of practical knowledge that I wouldn't want to learn the hard way. I probably won't ever have much need for most of it, but the same can be said of a lot of useful and worthwhile knowledge and skills.Netpackrat wrote:In the middle of a book on how to survive storms on a small boat in big oceans.
When a Texan was trying to sell the annexation of Texas to Congress he reportedly said: " All Texas needs is people and water." , "The Congressman said the same could be said of Hell Sir! "Langenator wrote:It's the third book of the Oxford American history that I've read. The other two I've read so far are The Glorious Cause (about the Revolution) by Middlekauf and Battle Cry of Freedom (Civil War) by James MacPherson (the dean of American Civil War historians).Windy Wilson wrote:I read The Radicalism of the American Revolution. He's good, I'll look up Empire of Liberty.Langenator wrote:Empire of Liberty by Gordon S. Wood. Book II of the Oxford history of the United States. Covers the period from the Constitution to the end of the War of 1812. Wood is the author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution, so it's not a bunch of SJW whining.
Battle Cry is particularly good. I credit MacPherson with planting the idea in my skull that the annexation of Texas did more than any other single event to massively accelerate the coming of the Civil War.
-the annexation itself was shady, and somewhat dubious from a Constitutional legal point of view. (It was not done by treaty, which would have required a 2/3 vote in the Senate, which they weren't going to get, because there were enough free state votes to block it. It was done instead by simple majority in a joint resolution of Congress.)
-Northern (free) states opposed annexation and admission of Texas to the Union.
-Annexation of Texas led quickly and directly to the Mexican War, which was also greatly opposed in the free states
-the Mexican War resulted in the acquisition of even more land
-it was the question of how to handle all of this land, plus the still unorganized parts of the Louisiana Purchase specifically, whether slavery could/should be banned or allowed in the Territories (and thus, the character of the eventual states from the territories thus organized, and thus, the future balance of power in the Federal government between slave states and non-slave states.) that ultimately led to the explosion.
(The central plank of the Republican party platform in 1856 and 1860 was barring any further expansion of slavery into the territories, not removing it where it already existed. The South, especially the Deep South states, viewed this as the next thing to a death threat.)