The fact that The South was pro-slavery overshadows and overwrites everything else. People who whine about the South being treated unfairly, having a right to secede, blah-blah-blah are the same as people who cry crocodile tears over the burning of Dresden or the Hiroshima nuking or Osama Bin Laden being killed without a proper trial. When your country/organization is responsible for the Holocaust, or the Rape of Nanking, or 9/11, or slavery, you are always wrong in every conflict with a nation that rejects such savagery.
The South was pro-slave, the North was anti-slave, it doesn’t matter if Lincoln aggregated power, or fired the first shot, or burned Southern cities, or used slavery as a pretext for putting down a legitimate rebellion. The slave factor overrides everything else, just like the Holocaust factor completely justifies the Dresden bombing and Japanese inhumanity to captured civilians and soldiers justifies Hiroshima.
Here is what the South SHOULD have done, to win the war or atleast to save its reputation in defeat: All they had to do was to free the slaves. The great justification for the war would be gone, and even if defeated, the Confederate cause would not be forever stained with slavery. What they did do was the exact opposite, they cemented slavery in their founding documents and thus doomed their cause not only to certain defeat, but to infamy.
The truth matters, and you clearly don't know what it is.
It took until 1840----only 25 years before the end of the Civil War---for the majority of Northern slaves to be freed. Pennsylvania still had slaves until 1847, Connecticut until 1848. There were still some slaves in New Hampshire and New Jersey until 1865.
Anti-black racism was rampant in the North. Blacks were attacked in the streets; they had their homes, schools, and churches burned.
So you can hop right off that moral high horse.
Abortion is a FAR worse institution than slavery ever was.
Bravo, well said.
How many of the Southeners who fought actually held slaves? I suspect damn few if any other than a few self appointed high ranking Officers.
So what other than their liberty and freedom inspired all those? Can anyone explain that?
The North government policies was more anti-Black than the South.
The South mandated equal pay for all soldiers, Black and White alike.
The North paid Black soldiers $10/mo minus a $3/mo clothing fee, while Whites weren’t charged a clothing fee and were salaried at $13/mo, effecting about a 46% pay cut for Blacks in the North.
The Confederacy had already outlawed overseas slave trade by 1863 and allowed individual states to outlaw slavery.
Union states still had legalized slavery at least 3 years after the War in Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky.
The South wasn’t without racism as declared in his “Cornerstone Speech”. Vice President Alexander Stephens, declared that the “cornerstone” of the new government “rest[ed] upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
It should also be noted that the Emancipation Proclamation failed to remove Indentured Servitude as a legitimate form of slavery for whites.
Historians of the period noted the White indentured servers were frequently maltreated to the point of death, whereas Black slaves were well provided because they were a longer term investment. The indentured servitude might only last 3-10 years, whereas the slave was considered property of his owner to be properly cared for as human livestock.
White slavery and indentured servitude far exceeded Black slavery in North America through about mid 1600s, and by 1700, about 45% of immigrants were indentured servants, with white slaves and indentured servants numbering about the same and Black slaves in N America. (S America and Latin speaking areas were much more heavily Black slave numbered than the N American English areas)
While both the British Empire abolished slavery and the US abolished imprisonment for indebtedness in 1833, they still lingered until about 1917 in various forms and not really internationally outlawed until 1947 by the UN.
Involuntary servitude and slavery were outlawed in the US in 2000 by the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, as well as peonage (which also had been outlawed in the US after the Civil War).