Pick your own debate... Regarding history!

I will now refute my opponent's contentions. Note: * means that I acknowledge my opponent's claim to be heavily under sourced, as most of them are. 1* . The Union was no longer the South's country. My opponent does not source his foreign aid claim, and even then, calling for foreign aid would hardly be immoral. America got help from France in the Revolutionary War, and we certainly don't call this immoral. 2. False. The Border States were part of the Union, yet practiced slavery. The Union would have turned on the Border States if my opponent's claim were true. 3. Post-war conduct is irrelevant, as the resolution only concerns the war. Otherwise, I would mention the horribly anti-South policies enacted by the Radical Republicans. If you want to debate Reconstruction, I'd be happy to in a later debate. 4*. The South had the right to interfere with any national legislation, because it's part of the legislation. Additionally, what about the mad John Brown, who led a murderous slave revolt [1]? 5*. The North agreed to the Fugitive Slave Law as a compromise [2] with complete Northern consent. The North did not have the right to impose taxes on the South oppresively, making the Nullification Crisis justified. Dred Scott had nothing to do with Northerners' rights. And again, these are pre-war. 6*. How does this affect the War Between the States? 7*. Completely irrelevant to the War that this debate concerns. 8*. The South still desired the unfair tariff to be lower still. 9*. A complete repeal of the tariff and the granting of the rights to Nullification would have done nicely. 10*. Benefiting from organized crime by turning them into effective military units decreased attacks on the South, and as the Atlantic Ocean was a war zone, attacking belligerent ships was perfectly okay. 11. The Northern Blockade from Lincoln's Anaconda Plan was one of the contributing factors to the food shortage [3]. The North can be blamed for their prisoners' hunger, as well as the hunger of most of the South. 12*. That's because only the winning side gets to try the losing side for war crimes. The Union wasn't going to persecute its own war criminals very much, making for a very biased judge. 13*. That was post-War. 14*. Johnston Who? Lots of Johnstons show up in a Google search for (Johnston Civil War). ~ So, the politician Lincoln was a corrupt liar. That's good to know. Lying is immoral. In most cases, being a politician is immoral. My opponent does not bother to cite Lincoln's "famous" debates with Douglass. Lincoln did not believe that as long as there must be superior, it should be the whites. He believed that there would always be the need for a superior race, forever. I would also like to point out that quite a few Southern leaders (Robert E. Lee, for example [4]) viewed slavery as a moral evil to eventually be abolished. There were also four times as many abolitionists in the South as there were in the North [5]. Given that both the North and South had some leaders against slavery, and both regions had slave states, there's really not too much of a discrepancy here. Lee probably would have been elected president after the war (as most successful generals are, such as Washington and Grant) and would have made attempts to limit and eventually abolish slavery. My opponent claims that Lincoln campaigned for black suffrage. However, he only considered this AFTER the War, as he says, "I cannot see, if universal amnesty is granted, how, under the circumstances, I can avoid exacting in return universal suffrage, or, at least, suffrage on the basis of intelligence and military service" [5]. He claims to have been forced into his position of granting universal suffrage. The South did not view African-Americans as animals. There were plenty of free blacks in the South to be treated as humans, and many enslaved blacks in the Border States as well. I have already shown how Lee was personally against slavery, so he obviously did not consider blacks to be animals. How many Southerners actually did? At most, not many, and at least, none. The tariffs were still an oppression. My opponent even acknowledges that it was better for the North that the South. The South then demanded that it be repealed for fairness. When this did not occur, it was oppressive to the South. My opponent does not contend the idea that oppression could only be determined by the victim of oppression, and therefore concedes it. My opponent provides no alternative for what the South to do about the Union fortresses on its territory. The South offered to buy them, but eventually had to take over the forts. The Union could have easily rebuilt them and built new ones on the new border. However, why would the South be so immoral as to openly cross an established border and attack a non-belligerent country, like the North did? The South wasn't looking for a war on the North. It just wanted freedom. My opponent does not give any reason to hold Butler and Sherman any higher than the Confederate soldiers. He also concedes Shaw's burial to be holy. In conclusion: The South was trying to get away from an oppressive government run by the power-hungry North. The war was NOT about slavery. The Confederacy did not utterly destroy Northern cities. The North praised John Brown for leading a mental slave revolt. The Union refused to sell its forts to the Confederacy. The Confederacy's prison camps were poor due to the Union's blockade. Lincoln was a corrupt politician who looked down upon blacks with the majority of Americans. Conduct after the war is irrelevant. Vote PRO! I would like to thank my opponent for this debate, and look forward to debating him sometime in the future! 1. http://www.historynet.com... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org... 3. http://www.foodhistory.com... 4. http://www.sonofthesouth.net... 5. The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. 6. http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org...