Lord, son. You’re so far off base you’re in left field. I can loathe slavery but still defend the motivations.
You are using 21st century words and beliefs and wrongly applying them to 19th century perspectives. And that which made a democrat a democrat in 1860 is completely different than that of today’s democrat. Apples and oranges.
Nest, you don’t have to be a Lost Causer to discuss the pros and cons the WBTS and all that goes with it. That’s just intellectual laziness people like you use to “dismiss” serious discussion.
If you had called slave owners of the time (both those in the north and the south) “racists” they would have had NO idea what you are talking about, nor would the abolitionists. And given that more than 3000 of said slave owners were black, it simply makes your comment (I’ll be nice) nonsense. Yes, by today’s thinking their (northerners and southerners) views on the black race were totally different then. Disgustingly different, but it was the perspective they held at that time.
“No, it wasn’t Lincoln initial intention to free the slaves but the South certainly wasn’t fighting to free them either.”
Then what’s your problem with my original comments?
“The ’liberty’ you claim denied to white Southerners was the right of a class to own slaves and property...”
Again...nonsense. The RIGHT I am talking about is the right to freely join a union of sovereign states...or to leave a union of sovereign states. A right that was hotly defended by both northern AND southern people at different times in our history leading up to the war.
Think about it (because, given your comments, it is obvious that you never have); Lincoln and the Union were saying to southerners, you do NOT have the freedom to leave this union. The liberty of a people to govern themselves — so fiercely fought for in the Revolutionary War — was denied. And if you had done any reading about Reconstruction whatsoever, you would know that southerners were treated far worse than the slaves ever were. Liberties and freedoms were almost non-existent.
By the way, “War Between the States” is the accurate description, as a “civil war” is one where people try to take over the government. The Confederates had no desire to take over the Union government...they simply wanted to be free to practice the principals of self rule established by the Founding Fathers and otherwise left alone.