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South Carolina And The So-Called Civil War Prophecy


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So as many of us forget, or didn't know, South Carolina caused a secessionist crisis back while Joseph Smith, Jr. was alive.  That one didn't ignite a Civil War, but probably didn't do Mexico any good.  Then South Carolina did manage to touch off a Civil War, but although there was considerable concern that Britain and France might intermeddle as suggested in the prophecy, they ultimately didn't.  Yet the position of the Church nevertheless is that the Civil War was the fulfillment of that prophecy.

 

Of course prophecies are truly tricky things at times.  Many Jews are still waiting for Elijah, we think he has already been here.  So is it possible that the Civil War wasn't the fulfillment of that prophecy?  Is it possible that the prophecy is yet to come?

 

As South Carolina is still misbehaving, and a South Carolinian just tried to touch off a race war by slaughtering nine people in a Church in Charleston whose history is strongly tied to the civil rights movement.   One possibly should be asking that question.  Are the comments to the prophecy wrong?

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Does it mention France. I know it says the Confederacy would call on the British and they did and they did get some help, mostly blockade runners and the like. Then it says that Britain will call on other nations for survival. That sounds like World War 2 to me and then war was poured out on almost all nations so we just need more war to finish the thing up.

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Does it mention France. I know it says the Confederacy would call on the British and they did and they did get some help, mostly blockade runners and the like. Then it says that Britain will call on other nations for survival. That sounds like World War 2 to me and then war was poured out on almost all nations so we just need more war to finish the thing up.

 

 

They tried to get France to help with the blockade as well.  Neither country wanted to get involved very much, though i know that Britain did have some cities (such as Liverpool) that were very sympathetic to the Confederates and did help them and France was not hostile.

 

Both countries were pretty much set to recognize the Confederate states as its own country in 1863-64 but chance and British anti-French sentiment stopped it from actually happening.  Napoleon said he would recognize if Britain did, but when the parliament member who pushed for the recognition spoke too much about his conversation with Napoleon, the other members became upset feeling as if the French were dictating Britain's actions.  So the measure didn't pass.

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Does it mention France. I know it says the Confederacy would call on the British and they did and they did get some help, mostly blockade runners and the like. Then it says that Britain will call on other nations for survival. That sounds like World War 2 to me and then war was poured out on almost all nations so we just need more war to finish the thing up.

No, it does not mention France:

 

For behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States, and the Southern States will call on other nations, even the nation of Great Britain, as it is called, and they shall also call upon other nations, in order to defend themselves against other nations; and then war shall be poured out upon all nations.

 

http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith/Alleged_false_prophecies/Civil_War

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They tried to get France to help with the blockade as well.  Neither country wanted to get involved very much, though i know that Britain did have some cities (such as Liverpool) that were very sympathetic to the Confederates and did help them and France was not hostile.

 

Both countries were pretty much set to recognize the Confederate states as its own country in 1863-64 but chance and British anti-French sentiment stopped it from actually happening.  Napoleon said he would recognize if Britain did, but when the parliament member who pushed for the recognition spoke too much about his conversation with Napoleon, the other members became upset feeling as if the French were dictating Britain's actions.  So the measure didn't pass.

 

The British were of two minds. The elite mostly favored the Confederacy for political reasons. The United States being weaker would be a boon to them. Public opinion favored the United States as Britain was antislavery.

 

The British built a bunch of blockade runners but a bigger issue was their construction of two Confederate warships. After the war the British paid reparations for damage done by the ships.

 

The British also nearly came to blows with the United States over the seizure of a British ship in Cuba. Lincoln spent a lot of political capital semi-apologizing to the British when public opinion was very anti-British in the Union. The European powers were also not disposed to war with the Union. War would have meant massive food shortages particularly in Britain. Add in that war with the Union risked large economic losses and the possible loss of Canada many in Britain hoped the Confederacy would win but did not have much interest in active intervention.

 

Oddly the Union's victory is actually tied to increases in British democracy within the next few years.

 

France was just not that interested. They mourned the loss of cotton but Napoleon was too busy using the distraction to try to set up his own little empire in Mexico.

 

Edit: Should point out that it was Napoleon III not the more well-known Napoleon Bonaparte most people think of when the name comes up.

Edited by The Nehor
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Britain was interested for economic reasons because the blockade had cut off the supply of cotton to their textile mills. Also, the South traditionally had stronger ties with Europe than the North because the Plantations historically sold their crops through factors in exchange for European goods. The industrial North relied on protectionist tariffs to protect their domestic industries from being flooded with European manufactures. America had, outside the South, historic high wages for labor because of the frontier escape valve. One of the minor issues in the North /South conflict was protectionism vs free trade. The South with its ruling elite being primarily agriculturally based favored free trade for its commodities and didn't worry about competition due to cheap labor because the political/economic elite had access to both slavery and abundant cheap uneducated subsistence farmer surplus which they marketed overseas by their patron peasants. Some things have not completely changed, although now the Northern industrialists instead of using protectionism to accommodate higher labor costs have simply moved their labor intensive manufacturing overseas to cheap labor areas.

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So as many of us forget, or didn't know, South Carolina caused a secessionist crisis back while Joseph Smith, Jr. was alive.  That one didn't ignite a Civil War, but probably didn't do Mexico any good.  Then South Carolina did manage to touch off a Civil War, but although there was considerable concern that Britain and France might intermeddle as suggested in the prophecy, they ultimately didn't.  Yet the position of the Church nevertheless is that the Civil War was the fulfillment of that prophecy.

 

Of course prophecies are truly tricky things at times.  Many Jews are still waiting for Elijah, we think he has already been here.  So is it possible that the Civil War wasn't the fulfillment of that prophecy?  Is it possible that the prophecy is yet to come?

 

As South Carolina is still misbehaving, and a South Carolinian just tried to touch off a race war by slaughtering nine people in a Church in Charleston whose history is strongly tied to the civil rights movement.   One possibly should be asking that question.  Are the comments to the prophecy wrong?

 

Not overtly but I always understood there was covert meddling by them.

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Britain was interested for economic reasons because the blockade had cut off the supply of cotton to their textile mills. Also, the South traditionally had stronger ties with Europe than the North because the Plantations historically sold their crops through factors in exchange for European goods. The industrial North relied on protectionist tariffs to protect their domestic industries from being flooded with European manufactures. America had, outside the South, historic high wages for labor because of the frontier escape valve. One of the minor issues in the North /South conflict was protectionism vs free trade. The South with its ruling elite being primarily agriculturally based favored free trade for its commodities and didn't worry about competition due to cheap labor because the political/economic elite had access to both slavery and abundant cheap uneducated subsistence farmer surplus which they marketed overseas by their patron peasants. Some things have not completely changed, although now the Northern industrialists instead of using protectionism to accommodate higher labor costs have simply moved their labor intensive manufacturing overseas to cheap labor areas.

Plus, places like Liverpool which had grown rich thru the slave trade were generally supportive of the Southern reliance on slave labor.
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Many of the Civil War issues other than slavery still plague us today, and we failed to stamp out the Southern culture which has actually infected much of the west at this point.

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Except section 87 isn't a civil war prophecy. It's a prophecy on the wars, plural, leading up bbqing to the second coming.

 

This. ^^

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Many of the Civil War issues other than slavery still plague us today, and we failed to stamp out the Southern culture which has actually infected much of the west at this point.

In some ways the war probably made southern culture worse.
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In some ways the war probably made southern culture worse.

If the war itself didn't, how reconstruction was handled  probably did.  I'm sure there was no love lost between many southerners and Lincoln, but I think President Lincoln wanted to do everything he could to put the nastiness of the war behind us as a nation.  It'd be interesting to see how reconstruction would have proceeded if he'd lived, compared to what actually happened under people who were of a more vindictive mindset.

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Except section 87 isn't a civil war prophecy. It's a prophecy on the wars, plural, leading up bbqing to the second coming.

 

I don't see anything about South Carolina that set up some sort of fuse that would lead to wars

breaking out all over the world.  There is nothing about South Carolina that instigated any wars

in the Middle East, Africa, Russia, India/Pakistan, etc..  When this is shown to be correct, D&C 87

will fall.

 

Regards,

Jim

 

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I don't see anything about South Carolina that set up some sort of fuse that would lead to wars

breaking out all over the world.  There is nothing about South Carolina that instigated any wars

in the Middle East, Africa, Russia, India/Pakistan, etc..  When this is shown to be correct, D&C 87

will fall.

 

Regards,

Jim

Except that it was not claimed that all these wars would be linked by cause. The Civil War was a new kind of industrialized war and was the first large example of it. Others followed but it was the first. It is easy to discredit prophecy when you make up additional elements and stick them in there. Of course it is also easy (and fun) to discredit you when you try to do it.

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One can only speculate as to what Lincoln, may or may not have done during Reconstruction.  But I think that the fact that he was succeeded by one of the weakest Presidents in American history did not help.  My view of Reconstruction is and was, that it failed not because of it vindictiveness -- but because it failed to remove the Bourbon class from the political power structure of the South.  The upshot of that was to allow the continuation of the feudal system that had pretty much existed down there from the colonial period onward, and still plagues America today.  Race is simply used to divide the white working class from voting in its own economic interest, and maintains the Bourbon in power.   This ongoing culture war shows no particular signs of going away, but does explain the way the internet has quickly moved from discussion of the Charleston slaughter to a discussion of the Confederate flag.  We have had a good Brother living with us for the last month, who happens to be an African-American, and is about my age.  I told him that as a child that flag just meant a reference to redneck rebelliousness, and asked him how he felt about it.  He agreed and said that he used to have one on his car.  But what that flag symbolizes has become quite a bit socially darker than when I was a child -- it has followed the path of another institution that I used to think was really great, namely the NRA.  When I was a kid the NRA was principally a sponsor of gun safety courses, and emphasized hunting and target practices, gun shows back then consisted primarily of hunting related firearms and hunting knives.   Now when you go to a gun show you see tables and tables of military style weapons, brass knuckle knives, instruction books on DIY silencers, etc. etc. and the NRA is out there promoting whacky policies like armed teachers, etc.  So too has the Confederate flag started to symbolize something very sinister to the point one wonders if we shouldn't have imposed upon the American South the same restraints as we imposed upon Germany with regards to certain WWII symbols.  After all, many, many more Americans died in the Civil War than died in WWII.

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Well actually both sides of WWII could be said to have learned their techniques from Sherman's March to the Sea as far as how they conducted their warfare, unfortunately for many soldiers in WWI the Generals had still not learned the lesson of the Civil War about the futility of massed charges.  As to the social battle comparison, not sure that one can make good comparisons between WWII and the Civil War Era as the Germans were much more efficient and vicious towards the Jews than the South ever was with regards to the Blacks.  Although in Nathan Bedford Forrest's case, that may have just been due to lack of resources.   Many comparisons could be made regarding industrialization in the American North, and industrialization in Germany and ultimately the Soviet Union -- not sure these actually take you anywhere.

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Well the South also hoped for European intervention, they would have remembered, unlike many current Americans that the War for Idependence was ultimately won because of French intervention.

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A case can be made for that, and I support it. It also must be remembered that Britain was at war with Spain and France at the the time. I think a more proximal cause for the US Civil War was Southern slave owners trying to impose slavery on Mexico, which has outlawed it years earlier, by way of the Alamo and the Mexican American War.

Edited by thesometimesaint
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The Mexican American War was pretty much known to have been something of a war of distraction, to distract the North from the brewing conflict over slavery.  It was my understanding that there was an aborted attempt to distract the nation again by invading Cuba, but the Nation refused to be distracted the second time.  Historically foreign wars in many countries have been a way of distracting people from problems within their own borders -- which explains in part the anti-Israeli rhetoric of various Muslim countries, and to a certain extent some of the warmongering with the Muslims in our own.

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The US Civil War was effectively the first modern war using what came to be modern weapons and tactics.  There were still the kind of tactics necessary to muzzleloading rifles (e.g. a battle line firing two volleys and then charging with bayonets), but this was the first war fought with early repeating firearms, including the first use of machine guns in warfare (the Gatling gun), the first war to seriously involve metal-hulled warships, a serious attempt at a submarine (the CSS Hunley), including the first warship sunk by submarine, and hot-air balloons for battlefield surveillance.

 

When the war was over the United States had the largest, most experienced and best equipped military service in the world.  If we had wanted conquest we could have conquered Canada easily and Great Britain would have not been able to do a thing about it.

 

 

From a tiny frontier force in 1860, the Union and Confederate armies had grown into the "largest and most efficient armies in the world" within a few years. European observers at the time dismissed them as amateur and unprofessional, but British historian John Keegan's assessment is that each outmatched the French, Prussian and Russian armies of the time, and but for the Atlantic, would have threatened any of them with defeat.  -- Wikipedia

 

The American Civil War was indeed the war which ushered in the modern era of conflict, and from thenceforth violence was poured out upon all nations.

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And here's a nice photo of a 1903 reunion meeting of a Confederate Veterans organization:

 

Cherokee_Confederates_Reunion.gif

 

Note the Confederate Battle Flag, and this is very much prior to the 1960's.  And note also the race of these men: Cherokee Indians.

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