Strong circumstantial evidence supporting piracy as a cause of the Civil War.

[Solvedit]

Oh, I know we don't have all of it. .

Exactly. There's no way to prove no pirate crews ever slipped in and tried to blend in, especially after the epidemics or the Creek civil war.
 

You've completely lost me here.  

The Arabic word for 'Ottoman' is aleuthmaniu -- and doesn't seem to relate to anything.  Could you expand on this idea, explaining who and what time period and where this might have happened?

From English-Arabic translator:
English         Arabic (casual tone)
Ottoman       العثماني
                   othmani

"Utman."

Don't you think your "aleuthmaniu" is actually "al uthmani," or "the Ottoman?"
 

Pirates might have taken a few slaves, yes, or bartered for a woman or two.  Some might have willingly gone with a stranger, depending on the culture of the tribe or the nation.

Native Americans weren't much like they are depicted in school level textbooks.  There was a broad range of cultures and practices and lifestyles, and it often changed after first contact with the Europeans.  In addition, warfare between groups often meant that whoever was in the area in the late 1600's might not be there in the late 1700's or the 1800's.

Pirates regularly took "Indian slaves" in the Caribbean.  So did the Spanish.  But these people aren't North American tribes and didn't speak the same language and wouldn't know how to survive in, say, Virginia.
 
I'm a scholar, so I do have an academic tone.......

So what's the reason you claim the pirates radically changed their behavior if they were displaced from the Caribbean by navies and plantations, and needed to learn how to live in the wilds of the South? Especially after tribes had been cut back by disease or (the Creek) civil war? Couldn't they offer any skills in exchange if they became affiliated with a tribe? Did they have a lot of culture to preserve, such that they would have been too proud to "go native" while it suited them?

Come to think of it, even the oldest woodcuts don't seem to show natives which looked like they were descended from Siberians, like the tribes west of the Rockies.  Pirates could have been in contact with the New World before Columbus.  The lower Mississippi valley was called "the empty quarter" by the earliest explorers.  Perhaps the pirates had brought epidemics with them, perhaps on purpose.  Perhaps they had insinuated themselves into native society at that time.  Some of their descendants could have "gone back to European" when it suited them.  
 

Decades of having instructors and critics stare me in the face and say "and what evidence do you have to back up THAT idea, eh?"  (and sometimes less kindly than that) flavor the way that I debate.  But I try to NOT treat others like we're facing one another over a table at a conference and arguing different sides.

You don't seem to appreciate I am not proving a point but offering a speculative hypothesis.

 

And I've taught a few semesters of genealogy at a local college.  That's where you get into more than the books tell you.

The whole French-Indian war against the British was the result of many complaints and broken agreements.  The wars in the Ohio valley that produced the Proclamation Line were another example of conflict over broken agreements...and that's just two of many documented complaints.  

Here's a list of treaties that were -- and then broken -- in the 1700's (more in the 1800's and 1900's) https://www.history.com/articles/native-...n-treaties

Indian reservations appeared after 1851. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/317.html

The King set aside the land west of the Proclamation line as an Indian Reserve.

 

I'm not sure who you mean with the sentence "the king wanted them there."  Native Americans did not have kings (in spite of some people titling the chiefs as "kings"), and if the French king wanted to settle pirates or whomever on an area of land, he would have written out a nice charter saying "we own this land and these people are here under our blessing" so that if some other group (Spanish, for instance) suddenly decided to settle there, the owner-king would have an excuse to send in troops.

The English king may have wanted to counterbalance the enlightenment thinking which threatened his power over the northeastern colonies. Kings don't have to be obvious. The king banned settlement the land west of the Proclamation Line, but then allowed smallpox-tainted blankets to be distributed to the natives.
 

In any case, your idea has never included a timeline.  It's a 150 year period of time, there were several periods when the pirates were around, you touch on the Ottomans as well, but you never actually firmly state what your idea is, which is what I am asking for.  Not the "I have an idea" but the "and this is how it happened" showing number of men, possible entry points, when they did what, and some sort of evidence of it.

For example (deliberately bad example and easily disproven) "we know that the ancient Egyptians made their first sea voyage to the Americas in the time of Hatshepsut (about 1460 BC) because they list things from the Americas -- ivory (from mammoths), spotted cats (lynxes), monkeys (from Mexico), and lots of gold (all over America) that they brought back.  Therefore America is the land of Punt."

Your idea lacks that kind of statement.  That's what I've been asking for:  Which group of pirates, how many, where did they land, where did they travel, and what evidence shows they were there.

So, you know a pattern by which theories are impeached, so you want me to try to model it?    

We have a few pieces of evidence leading to a hypothesis, not an exact theory.

Tell me, what would keep them out?

[Solvedit]

A large area of the early colonies was settled by Cavaliers.  

Confederate soldier Sam Watkins said he believed his people were the Cavaliers and were fighting for freedom from centralized control.

He was a private.  You can't have a society composed entirely of Cavaliers and their wives.  Who would do the cooking and cleaning and farming?  

The actual English Cavaliers may have been in the habit of giving their servants curt, not very informative answers.  The lords and barons in English-occupied areas may actually have been puppets of the King without any real leadership ability.  

It may have led to the opinion among the Cavaliers' commoners that they too could be lords and barons if only they were in charge.  

Perhaps they were fighting for the freedom to run their area according to their covetousness of being top dog.

There may have been secret human trafficking for the benefit of the Cavaliers and their people from secret Barbary Pirate contacts, in the old country or maybe the Colonies.  Perhaps the common folk picked up "othmani" values from the pirates.  In the Ottoman Empire, they used to buy an infant with an intelligent pedigree and raise them as an administrative slave.  

Can it be the "cavalier" butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers saw it as a path to realize their ambition to be Lords and Ladies?  Perhaps despite the fact that their former aristocracy in Europe had shown them that they lack management skills? 

This country did sharply increase compulsory public education during the last big wave of migration before the Civil War. Perhaps they wanted to stave off "othmani" values?  


The presence of pirates might have dovetailed with this ambition.

Perhaps the pirates then offended England?  Maybe the ones way, way down south did not want to travel up to the northeastern colonies to snatch an administrative slave?  The northeastern colonists may have been more Roundhead than Cavalier, and were on the lookout for trafficking.  Perhaps the pirates preferred to go to Jamaica or lie in wait for English visitors, or take an English ship, dressed as othmani? 

Perhaps that's why England and France encouraged and supplied the Confederacy but never got around to providing military support?

[Byrd]

A large area of the early colonies was settled by Cavaliers. 

In Virginia only, and they were supporters of King Charles during the English Civil war (around 1650) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_C...istorical)
 

(lots of snippage)
There may have been secret human trafficking for the benefit of the Cavaliers and their people from secret Barbary Pirate contacts, in the old country or maybe the Colonies.  Perhaps the common folk picked up "othmani" values from the pirates.  In the Ottoman Empire, they used to buy an infant with an intelligent pedigree and raise them as an administrative slave.  

Can it be the "cavalier" butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers saw it as a path to realize their ambition to be Lords and Ladies?  Perhaps despite the fact that their former aristocracy in Europe had shown them that they lack management skills

 
There weren't a lot of Cavaliers, and when they came, they brought their household servants (who were the butchers, bakers, hog-tenders, farmers, sheep herders, and candlestick makers on their estates back in England.)  Other people who came at about the same time were the very religious Puritans (thrown out of several countries for being pests) and indentured servants from Europe.  There were also a number of people who were not going to inherit much of anything from their parents (younger sons) and came to the Americas to "seek their fortune."

The Lords and Ladies didn't need slaves.  They had servants and indentured laborers (who were practically slaves.)  The "no kings" idea comes from the way that the colonists were treated by King George and th European Enlightenment ( .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment#)
 

Exactly. There's no way to prove no pirate crews ever slipped in and tried to blend in, especially after the epidemics or the Creek civil war.

Again... from where (Caribbean?  French?  Spanish?  English?  Dutch?  American?  Barbary?) and how many and what time period?
 

From English-Arabic translator:
English         Arabic (casual tone)
Ottoman       العثماني
                   othmani

"Utman."

Don't you think your "aleuthmaniu" is actually "al uthmani," or "the Ottoman?"
 

Undoubtedly... but they didn't call themselves Ottomans and I'm not sure how this is supposed to fit into your idea.
 

So what's the reason you claim the pirates radically changed their behavior if they were displaced from the Caribbean by navies and plantations, and needed to learn how to live in the wilds of the South? Especially after tribes had been cut back by disease or (the Creek) civil war? Couldn't they offer any skills in exchange if they became affiliated with a tribe? Did they have a lot of culture to preserve, such that they would have been too proud to "go native" while it suited them?

Actually, I didn't claim that.  You seemed to think that they'd land on the coast and start foraging and living among the natives while (apparently) making their way north for reasons that you haven't made clear.

My point is that by 1700, the whole southern area was settled, though not by the English (as you can see on this map: https://www.historicpictoric.com/product...ntic-coast)  Those areas had towns and farms and cities and there was boat traffic up and down the Mississippi.  By 1760, the area was even more densely settled (just in time for the proclamation you mention), and by 1850 there were no Native American tribes in those areas. (Jackson and the "Trail of Tears.")

You haven't said when they were supposed to have come through this area and how many there were.  You've pointed to several dates, none of which really seem to relate to the Civil War.
 

Come to think of it, even the oldest woodcuts don't seem to show natives which looked like they were descended from Siberians, like the tribes west of the Rockies. 

The woodcuts were done by people in Europe for the most part.  None had ever seen anyone but other Europeans.  If you look at their woodcuts of Asian and African and Mediterranean people, they all look as if they just stepped out of a British pub.

Genetics shows no European mixing until after the Spanish began conquering the Americas.
 

Pirates could have been in contact with the New World before Columbus.  The lower Mississippi valley was called "the empty quarter" by the earliest explorers.  Perhaps the pirates had brought epidemics with them, perhaps on purpose.  Perhaps they had insinuated themselves into native society at that time.  Some of their descendants could have "gone back to European" when it suited them.  

Why would they be in the Americas before Columbus?  The voyage was chancy and early explorers often lost half (or all) of the ships they sent.  There were no European pirates there, and the Barbary pirates had better pickings hunting ships in Europe and the Mediterranean.  

And the only reason the Mississippi area was called "the empty quarter" is because there were no European towns and farms there.  There were many Caddoan towns, however (and we still have some of the mounds.) 

As to your last point, if they somehow showed up and somehow married into the tribes along the Gulf Coast...then why would they have left a comfortable life to go to Ohio and get involved in the Proclamation Line?  And how many are we talking about?

You don't seem to appreciate I am not proving a point but offering a speculative hypothesis.

Other than a vague "pirates caused the Civil War" there's no real hypothesis.  No set of dates, no explanation of who and how and why or where (which is why I keep bringing this up.)

Your title was "strong circumstantial evidence supporting piracy as the cause of the Civil War."  You haven't presented any circumstantial links between pirates and the Civil War timeline.

[Solvedit]

In Virginia only, and they were supporters of King Charles during the English Civil war (around 1650) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_C...istorical)

Virginia was bigger then, and my point was a video claimed Sam Watkins identified with Cavalier society whether or not he was actually descended from Cavalier society.

There weren't a lot of Cavaliers, and when they came, they brought their household servants (who were the butchers, bakers, hog-tenders, farmers, sheep herders, and candlestick makers on their estates back in England.) 

Just like I said, but I may have made a mistake in thinking they wanted to identify with the Cavaliers themselves and become lords and ladies by taking Ottoman-style administrative slaves.  They may merely have wanted to continue the system by which the Cavaliers of their world were "free" to pressure people into helping the butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers.  So that's their freedom: the freedom to decide some people have to serve as what they used to tastelessly call "white slaves."

The Lords and Ladies didn't need slaves.  They had servants and indentured laborers (who were practically slaves.)  The "no kings" idea comes from the way that the colonists were treated by King George and th European Enlightenment ( .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment#)

My point, which I am rolling back a bit, was that the butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers may have hoped to become lords and ladies by taking slaves from the intelligent folk and becoming intimately familiar with how they think.  I now think the average private may merely have hoped for the leaders of their society to be drawn from their own ethnicity.  The whole thing may have been about replacing English-dominated cavalier society with Celtic-led cavalier society, although there was officially a break between 1776 and 1861 and they had to go underground by advertising jobs in Georgia in order to trap people.  This all dovetails with the pirate theory. 

 

Again... from where (Caribbean?  French?  Spanish?  English?  Dutch?  American?  Barbary?) and how many and what time period?

What difference does it make?  Haven't you ever heard of Jean Lafitte?  

The point is, if they hoped to restore Cavalier society, they needed a way to get slaves from the management classes.  Perhaps when the Caribbean got busier with sugar commerce and better patrolled, perhaps when a pirate ship could no longer hope to beat a steam ship with shell-firing guns, they could no longer hope to take human traffic at sea.  Perhaps they kept the pirate captains around for their knowledge of human trafficking and their connections, and let the crew get jobs.  Some of the no-longer-necessary deck hands may have preferred to take advantage of epidemics or wars among the natives, and run off and claim some land to forage on. 
Perhaps it was easier for the former pirate captains to take people from the Caribbean than to try to insinuate themselves into northeast society to obtain their human traffic.  Perhaps that's why England and France encouraged them and sold them supplies but left them without military assistance as they lost the war.

 

Undoubtedly... but they didn't call themselves Ottomans and I'm not sure how this is supposed to fit into your idea.

False.  Before the internet made us all a lot smarter, they did call themselves Utman.

 
Actually, I didn't claim that.  You seemed to think that they'd land on the coast and start foraging and living among the natives while (apparently) making their way north for reasons that you haven't made clear.

My point is that by 1700, the whole southern area was settled, though not by the English (as you can see on this map: https://www.historicpictoric.com/product...ntic-coast)  Those areas had towns and farms and cities and there was boat traffic up and down the Mississippi.  By 1760, the area was even more densely settled (just in time for the proclamation you mention), and by 1850 there were no Native American tribes in those areas. (Jackson and the "Trail of Tears.")

You haven't said when they were supposed to have come through this area and how many there were.  You've pointed to several dates, none of which really seem to relate to the Civil War.

No, you decided the Proclamation Line somehow meant the Ohio river valley because you associate it with Pontiac's war.  

You need to look at the Proclamation Line and the resulting Indian Reserve on a map.  I am guessing they did not respect the Indian Reserve during epidemics and civil wars between natives like the Creek War.  The natives may also have found them useful.

https://denyignorance.com/uploader/image...75.svg.png

 

The woodcuts were done by people in Europe for the most part.  None had ever seen anyone but other Europeans.  If you look at their woodcuts of Asian and African and Mediterranean people, they all look as if they just stepped out of a British pub.

I'm guessing that's a wild guess.  Could you know all or even most of them?  Do you seriously think explorers didn't bring artists to document what they saw?  They did for botany and zoology. 

Genetics shows no European mixing until after the Spanish began conquering the Americas.

Forgive me for suspecting you just made that up like you guessed about every painting and woodcut. 

 Why would they be in the Americas before Columbus?  The voyage was chancy and early explorers often lost half (or all) of the ships they sent.  There were no European pirates there, and the Barbary pirates had better pickings hunting ships in Europe and the Mediterranean. 

You said pirates, that means all they can do is take a ship, right?  Could they not have brought things to sell to the natives  Perhaps human traffic or opium?  Could they not have really liked the exchange rate because the natives didn't know what gold was worth in the old world?  Arab sailing technology was quite advanced in the 15th and 16th centuries, and pirates could have been desperate to make money or escape.
 

And the only reason the Mississippi area was called "the empty quarter" is because there were no European towns and farms there.  There were many Caddoan towns, however (and we still have some of the mounds.)

The early explorers claimed it was curiously empty.

As to your last point, if they somehow showed up and somehow married into the tribes along the Gulf Coast...then why would they have left a comfortable life to go to Ohio and get involved in the Proclamation Line?  And how many are we talking about?

You really should look at a map of the Proclamation Line and the Indian Reserve to the west of it before you go on about Ohio.  https://denyignorance.com/uploader/image...75.svg.png 

Or did you think pirates would respect the king's wishes to leave the land to the Indians?  Don't you think he may have set it aside so it would fill up with people who weren't particularly interested in freedom or the Enlightenment?  They did send a few gifts of smallpox tainted blankets and handkerchiefs at about the same time they established the Proclamation Line. 
 

Other than a vague "pirates caused the Civil War" there's no real hypothesis.  No set of dates, no explanation of who and how and why or where (which is why I keep bringing this up.)

The research hasn't been done.  All we have is a hypothesis.

Your title was "strong circumstantial evidence supporting piracy as the cause of the Civil War."  You haven't presented any circumstantial links between pirates and the Civil War timeline.

Shell guns were developed in the 1820s, and effective steam-driven warships were developed in the 1840s.  They surely drove many a pirate off the high seas.  They may have come to the Americas.  
Cavalier society (for Sam Watkins who was nowhere near Virginia said he identified with it, so they were modeling it) may have appreciated a little human traffic from the educated classes.  
Whether through actual high seas piracy or other means, they may have offended England and France, who may have then encouraged them to rebel, then provided too little help for them to win.  
[/quote]

[Byrd]

The research hasn't been done.  All we have is a hypothesis.
Shell guns were developed in the 1820s, and effective steam-driven warships were developed in the 1840s.  They surely drove many a pirate off the high seas.  They may have come to the Americas.  
Cavalier society (for Sam Watkins who was nowhere near Virginia said he identified with it, so they were modeling it) may have appreciated a little human traffic from the educated classes.  
Whether through actual high seas piracy or other means, they may have offended England and France, who may have then encouraged them to rebel, then provided too little help for them to win.  

First, this isn't a hypothesis.  In a historical hypothesis, "what, who, how, when, where, why" should all be presented.  You have a "What" -- Strong Circumstantial Evidence Supporting Piracy as the Cause of the Civil War."  You don't have a "Who" (which pirates?  Speaking what language? How many?).  You don't have a "How" (how did their actions cause the states to reject federal authority over states in certain legal matters/allowing new states to have slavery/rise of the Republican party (who opposed slavery) https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetective...civil-war/, or how pirates convinced everyone to have slaves, or how pirates forced the Missouri Compromise in Congress, or any of the minor but important social and legal issues that led up to the Civil War (https://www.battlefields.org/learn/artic...-civil-war).  You haven't provided a "When" -- your suggested (lot of "what ifs" and "suppose" in your document) timeline is all over the place.  There's no "Where" (where did they start this and where were they active?) or "Why" (why on earth would they do this?)

When pressed for details you often skip to "Perhaps when the Caribbean" or "the average private may merely have hoped for the leaders of their society to be drawn from their own ethnicity" and "Can it be the" (etcetera) and then begin weaving from there -- without supporting the "perhaps/may have/can it be" statement.

That's like saying "Perhaps when the Caribbean was warmer, Chupacabras migrated away from the hot weather.  They may have built canoes so that they could travel across the Gulf of Mexico.  Can it be when they arrived here they found hunting lost humans was a safe way to exist?"  To have this taken seriously, I have to have something that shows conclusively that Chupacabras existed, that they migrate away from warm weather.   Then prove that they built boats that could have traveled long distances.

Tossing in mention of one Confederate private who neglected to mention that his family was extremely wealthy (hence the interest in Cavaliers since he wasn't part of the officer corps) and owned upwards of a hundred slaves and who forgot to mention slaves in his own service unit doesn't help your idea of pirates doing anything to cause the Civil War ... particularly since he wrote his memoir about the war and not things leading up to it... like the Dred Scott decision.

So how about a clear statement of what/who/how/when/where/why -- without any suppose/if/consider/may have hoped/can it be/ statements.

[Solvedit]

You don't have a "Who" (which pirates?  Speaking what language? How many?).

Doesn't matter at all.  Why do we have to know exactly who they were?

Are you saying there weren't any pirates?  You've already said there were in New York.  Why do we have to know exactly who they were to suspect continued operations in secret may have offended Europe?  

You don't have a "How" (how did their actions cause the states to reject federal authority over states in certain legal matters/allowing new states to have slavery/rise of the Republican party (who opposed slavery), or how pirates convinced everyone to have slaves, or how pirates forced the Missouri Compromise in Congress, or any of the minor but important social and legal issues that led up to the Civil War.

Of course I did.  I suggested it's possible they got the people who did all those things you mention to overestimate their chances of French and British help, because the former pirates thought they had hidden their tracks if they committed human trafficking against French and British educated people in the Caribbean.

It's also possible the plantation owning class wanted to cut down the numbers of people who had moved in to the Indian Reserve of the Proclamation Line, which is not in Ohio, before anyone was allowed to move there.  The plantation owners, as well as wealthy Europeans, may have purchased land there, then found it unusable because it was populated by bands of heavily armed people who had moved in before they were allowed.  Why did the natives starve on the Trail of Tears?  Couldn't they simply catch and dry out a little more game or set aside some more crops?  What was so pressuring them that they were unable to bring enough food to withstand a trip of a few weeks? 

 You haven't provided a "When" -- your suggested (lot of "what ifs" and "suppose" in your document) timeline is all over the place.  There's no "Where" (where did they start this and where were they active?) or "Why" (why on earth would they do this?)

Why is it so important?  As various pressures wore down the Indians, like the smallpox blankets and the Creek civil war, more and more moved in gradually.  There was probably pressure from better ships and naval guns, increasing European presence and naval patrols in the Caribbean, and increasing land pressure on Caribbean islands and perhaps the South or Central American mainland.

When pressed for details you often skip to "Perhaps when the Caribbean" or "the average private may merely have hoped for the leaders of their society to be drawn from their own ethnicity..."

Are you denying the South can be a little bit about favoring people with antebellum ancestry? 

That's like saying "Perhaps when the Caribbean was warmer, Chupacabras migrated away from the hot weather.  They may have built canoes so that they could travel across the Gulf of Mexico.  Can it be when they arrived here they found hunting lost humans was a safe way to exist?"  To have this taken seriously, I have to have something that shows conclusively that Chupacabras existed, that they migrate away from warm weather.   Then prove that they built boats that could have traveled long distances.

But there are no chupacabras.  There definitely were pirates and they probably went somewhere especially the ones which took to foraging and smoking bush meat because they probably already knew a few things about how to survive in the wild.

Tossing in mention of one Confederate private who neglected to mention that his family was extremely wealthy (hence the interest in Cavaliers since he wasn't part of the officer corps) and owned upwards of a hundred slaves and who forgot to mention slaves in his own service unit doesn't help your idea of pirates doing anything to cause the Civil War ... particularly since he wrote his memoir about the war and not things leading up to it... like the Dred Scott decision.

To reiterate, he claimed their cause was to preserve what he falsely called the freedom of Cavalier society which may be the freedom to take Ottoman-style administrative slaves, which may suggest human trafficking, which may have offended France and England and led them to encourage the South, then offer too little support for them to win. 

So how about a clear statement of what/who/how/when/where/why -- without any suppose/if/consider/may have hoped/can it be/ statements.

You might be a little mixed up about what we're doing here.  Do people come to a discussion forum prepared to do a thesis defense?  Even though other parts of the forum discuss aliens and cryptids and government conspiracies? 

Are you sure you didn't crib your position from sitting in on a session where someone wanted research funding and had to state a testable hypothesis in order to get the funding?  It's as if you're doggedly trying to apply a pattern that doesn't fit.

[Solvedit]

You are saying the pirates lost their advantage to steam ships and that is what stopped them? I thought most of them went into legitimate business instead of pirating.

On Tortuga (Haiti), the pirates became know as buccaneers. This is because they went into the barbecue business. They raised and smoked meat for the ships that called to port. Buccaneer is a mispronouncing of the French word for barbeque. They found selling food to be more stable and more profitable than attacking ships.

Steam ships and increasing commerce and naval presence surely reduced piracy.

The islands of the Caribbean were valuable as sugar plantations and as the sugar plantations expanded, they surely drove off the boucanieres who foraged the place.  They may have been concurrently drying meat and pirating because the word "buccaneer" means pirate. 

Armed with foraging and other wilderness survival skills, and having been driven from the Caribbean by increased naval presence to protect the increased commerce from the sugar plantations and other sources, they may have gone to the Indian Reserve after the British army distributed smallpox-infested blankets (surely giving the virus strict orders not to spread beyond Pontiac's Rebellion) or after the Creek War which was a civil war among the natives as well as against the US.

It may have been the king's secret plan to fill the colonies up with the king's men because even in 1763 his majesty may have been concerned about the growing trend of enlightenment thinking which led to the Revolution.

[Solvedit]

I take exception to your phrasing of "Southeastern tribes had vacated". They were forced off their land by the government and that shows you know little of the history of that area and period.

Even before Indian Removal, heavily armed bands of newcomers could have moved in either to trade human captives with the natives or because the natives had been laid low by the smallpox epidemic which the British army started over Pontiac's war, or during the Creek War which was in part a civil war among natives. I write to point out that I am referring to the period before Indian Removal. I have already stated evidence that the natives would employ educated slaves such as "Selocta" being almost identical to the Polish word for nobility, szlachta. They may have been obtaining educated captives from the Barbary Pirates who in turn may have obtained them from the rest of the Ottoman Empire.

England and France officially stayed neutral but unofficially France supported the South. How exactly was this holding the Americans responsible for anything?
Again what does any of your reasoning have to do with the American Civil War?

Various European powers or their aristocracy may have invested in the former Indian Reserve because the US sold the land to pay off debt. There were signs of upheaval in Europe in 1848 almost as if aristocrats were no longer able to afford their secret police. If it was already occupied by people who hadn't been allowed to move in, they might have blamed the US.

Another reason may be that while the ordinary deck crew/foraging boucanieres took to foraging, the captains may have continued to take human traffic. Perhaps after the Barbary Wars and the explosive-shell-firing naval gun and the propeller-driven steam warship, they could no longer count on the Ottoman empire providing educated slaves. Perhaps they found a way, not necessarily high seas piracy, to take educated people from the Caribbean, which would impact the vital sugar business? Perhaps the Cavalier-leaning South enthusiastically bought the former pirates' human traffic?

If so, the US federal govenment had sold land which it left to Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, etc. to police. And it wasn't controlling how its citizens treated people from abroad.

Suppose this led England and France to lend support and encouragement to Southern ambitions for independence. Suppose they sold enough weapons and supplies to the Confederacy to get them involved in a large-scale war, but not quite enough to win. It did, however, encourage the South to rebel which led to the Federal government retaking the place.

This would have had at least three effects, each of which may have been planned for by the French and English, if any of this is true.
1. The federal government occupied the South. They may have known they'd be in for another war if my theory of ongoing piracy or human trafficking is correct, and if they suppressed it while occupying the South.

2. Some of the people who had moved in to the Indian Reserve before they were allowed were killed off in the war. (The US largely respected the Proclamation Line for a time.)

3. It took away an unfair competitive advantage posessed by slave-owning planters, since France and England had done away with slavery.

In fairness, there's a chance the US might have sold off the land then taken the position that it's Alabama's or Mississippi's or Tennessee's responsibility to police it.  

It could be that the Civil War was in some ways a war to encourage the US to exercise more control over its citizens.  It could be that France and England wanted to either see the US exercise enough control over the land it had sold and over the people, some of whom may have been committing human trafficking against French and English sugar growers, or see the South separate so France and England could deal with them directly.

[Byrd]

Doesn't matter at all.  Why do we have to know exactly who they were?

Are you saying there weren't any pirates?  You've already said there were in New York.  Why do we have to know exactly who they were to suspect continued operations in secret may have offended Europe?  

We have to know who they were (I mean generically -- Spanish?  French?  Dutch?  Barbary?  Caribbean?  Asian? (etc)) so we know what kind of evidence will confirm or eliminate part of the investigation.  Same reason we have to know where they landed and how many there were.

 

It's also possible the plantation owning class wanted to cut down the numbers of people who had moved in to the Indian Reserve of the Proclamation Line, which is not in Ohio, before anyone was allowed to move there.  

Why would they purchase land there?  Plantation owners farmed sugar cane (very profitable) and cotton (very very profitable) and tobacco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantation_economy) here in the US.  Those grow well in the South and if the house is on the plantation, they can keep direct control over their land. 

 

Why did the natives starve on the Trail of Tears?  Couldn't they simply catch and dry out a little more game or set aside some more crops?  What was so pressuring them that they were unable to bring enough food to withstand a trip of a few weeks? 

I admit this bit shocked me -- YOU HAVEN'T HEARD OF THE TRAIL OF TEARS??????????

....dear ghods.
 

But there are no chupacabras.  There definitely were pirates and they probably went somewhere especially the ones which took to foraging and smoking bush meat because they probably already knew a few things about how to survive in the wild.

 
Except that the European pirates of the 1800's (for example) were townfolk and fishermen and wouldn't know how to forage in America.  Barbary pirates were townfolk  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs)  working out of well-defined territories.  Pirates of the 1700's were different.

Also, foraging is very time-consuming and often not successful (some plants have to be eaten at certain times, which parts of plants are edible) -- squirrels are hard to hit, birds are difficult unless you trap them, deer are very elusive, etc.  

 

To reiterate, he claimed their cause was to preserve what he falsely called the freedom of Cavalier society which may be the freedom to take Ottoman-style administrative slaves, which may suggest human trafficking, which may have offended France and England and led them to encourage the South, then offer too little support for them to win. 

His book is available to read for free on the Internet https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/132...mages.html

Here's what he said about Cavaliers:
Secession may have been wrong in the abstract, and has been tried and settled by the arbitrament of the sword and bayonet, but I am as firm in my convictions today of the right of secession as I was in 1861. The South is our country, the North is the country of those who live there. We are an agricultural people; they are a manufacturing people. They are the descendants of the good old Puritan Plymouth Rock stock, and we of the South from the proud and aristocratic stock of Cavaliers. We believe in the doctrine of State rights, they in the doctrine of centralization.

Notice that he's calling the North/Protestants "Roundheads" (basically people who didn't want a king) and the South "Cavaliers" (supporters of King Charles)

He also said:
We only fought for our State rights, they for Union and power. The South fell battling under the banner of State rights, but yet grand and glorious even in death. Now, reader, please pardon the digression. It is every word that we will say in behalf of the rights of secession in the following pages.

Pirates didn't care about states rights.

He mentions Cavaliers four times.  Here's the third:
...he began to pitch in on the Yankee nation, and gave them particular fits as to their geneology. He said that we of the South had descended from the royal and aristocratic blood of the Huguenots of France, and of the cavaliers of England, etc.; but that the Yankees were the descendents of the crop-eared Puritans and witch burners, who came over in the Mayflower, and settled at Plymouth Rock. 

And the fourth just calls a comrade killed in battle a "Cavalier."
 

You might be a little mixed up about what we're doing here.  Do people come to a discussion forum prepared to do a thesis defense?  Even though other parts of the forum discuss aliens and cryptids and government conspiracies? 

Are you saying we should accept everything?  Or that debate is discouraged?  It's a grand old tradition of message boards that people do ask questions and debate evidence.  Some areas seem to be less controversial than others.

Are you sure you didn't crib your position from sitting in on a session where someone wanted research funding and had to state a testable hypothesis in order to get the funding?  It's as if you're doggedly trying to apply a pattern that doesn't fit.

Attempting to belittle others is one of the reasons that ATS finally failed...it devolved into a lot of sneers and name-calling (I was there from 1999, so I've got a decent understanding of the history of ATS.)

As to "sitting in on a session where someone wanted research funding", the answer is "no."  I have, however, taught elementary school and high school and taught calculus at a university... among other things (there are people here who know me and they can confirm that this is true.)

[Solvedit]

We have to know who they were (I mean generically -- Spanish?  French?  Dutch?  Barbary?  Caribbean?  Asian? (etc)) so we know what kind of evidence will confirm or eliminate part of the investigation.  Same reason we have to know where they landed and how many there were.

No, we don't.  Besides, they probably came from all over even on a given ship, even if it was from the Barbary States.

Why would they purchase land there?  Plantation owners farmed sugar cane (very profitable) and cotton (very very profitable) and tobacco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantation_economy) here in the US. [emphasis added.]  Those grow well in the South and if the house is on the plantation, they can keep direct control over their land.  Besides, when the government sold off the lands vacated by Indian Removal, who did they sell it to?  Why not the Southern planters?

You still haven't looked at a map.  Where do you think the Indian Reserve was?  Don't you recall the planters fought to win Texas and Kansas for slavery? So why not the former Indian Reserve?

I admit this bit shocked me -- YOU HAVEN'T HEARD OF THE TRAIL OF TEARS??????????

....dear ghods.

Mentioned several times.

Except that the European pirates of the 1800's (for example) were townfolk and fishermen and wouldn't know how to forage in America.  Barbary pirates were townfolk  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs)  working out of well-defined territories.  Pirates of the 1700's were different.

You already admitted they weren't adverse to taking native slaves or stated why they would have suddenly dropped this behavior if they came to America.  If they were pressured out of the Caribbean, they may have been out of options.  Where do you think they went?  Can it be for example that there were no spare jobs for the Barbary pirates back in the Barbary States and they knew it?  They could have gone to the Americas.

Also, foraging is very time-consuming and often not successful (some plants have to be eaten at certain times, which parts of plants are edible) -- squirrels are hard to hit, birds are difficult unless you trap them, deer are very elusive, etc. 

They may have been out of options, and they could easily have continued taking native slaves like you said they did while in the Caribbean.  Plus, they had all day.

 His book is available to read for free on the Internet https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/132...mages.html

Here's what he said about Cavaliers:
Secession may have been wrong in the abstract, and has been tried and settled by the arbitrament of the sword and bayonet, but I am as firm in my convictions today of the right of secession as I was in 1861. The South is our country, the North is the country of those who live there. We are an agricultural people; they are a manufacturing people. They are the descendants of the good old Puritan Plymouth Rock stock, and we of the South from the proud and aristocratic stock of Cavaliers. We believe in the doctrine of State rights, they in the doctrine of centralization.

Notice that he's calling the North/Protestants "Roundheads" (basically people who didn't want a king) and the South "Cavaliers" (supporters of King Charles)

He also said:
We only fought for our State rights, they for Union and power. The South fell battling under the banner of State rights, but yet grand and glorious even in death. Now, reader, please pardon the digression. It is every word that we will say in behalf of the rights of secession in the following pages.

Pirates didn't care about states rights.

The pirates may have had no place to go but land vacated by things the Pontiac War plagues, which may have spread to the southern parts of the Indian Reserve, or the Creek civil war.  We know some of the captains became established in the cities like Jean Lafitte.  Their deck hands may have resented them and run off, or not found legitimate work to their liking.  Maybe the deck hands didn't have the money to pay off people who may have been looking for them.

Are you saying we should accept everything?  Or that debate is discouraged?  It's a grand old tradition of message boards that people do ask questions and debate evidence.  Some areas seem to be less controversial than others.

Attempting to belittle others is one of the reasons that ATS finally failed...it devolved into a lot of sneers and name-calling (I was there from 1999, so I've got a decent understanding of the history of ATS.)

As to "sitting in on a session where someone wanted research funding", the answer is "no."  I have, however, taught elementary school and high school and taught calculus at a university... among other things (there are people here who know me and they can confirm that this is true.)

You are the one who seems to be trying to set official parameters.  Your insistence on knowing exactly where the pirates came from is irrelevant to the evidence which is leading to a tentative hypothesis.

One basis of my tentative hypothesis is, we know they were in the Caribbean in earlier centuries, so where did they go?  We know a few captains came here and tried to go legit, you yourself admitted some of the crews went to New York, so why not elsewhere, especially where beleaguered foreign nations (the natives) were in charge and there were no records?  

Some of the deck hands may have been pressured out of the former Indian Reserve onto less-valuable land when owning it became legal or maybe during the Gold Rush or after the war.  Perhaps they went west?