I don't recall anyone ever claiming that the North was "innocent," but it certainly claimed to be the aggrieved party in the years leading immediately up to the Civil War because the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise (which opened up "Bloody Kansas") followed by the Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision (not to mention the caning by Preston Brooks of Senator Charles Sumner). From being confined to places where it had always been practiced it is obvious that the "slave power" was indeed attempting to spread the "peculiar institution" throughout the entire country.
While it's true that the anti-slavery movement can be compared in some ways to the contemporary Left, it can also be compared to today's social conservative movement in that it was being forced to see (and be complicit in) the spread of something it believed to be morally wrong and it was being told to shut up and take it.
The first seven states seceded before Lincoln had even been inaugurated, knowing full well that he had no intention of interfering with slavery where it already existed. They basically pitched a hissy fit because the candidate of a non-extentionist party (which is what the Republican party was) was elected at all--a true temper tantrum in every since of the word.
If the Southern states had stayed put slavery would have continued unmolested there and there would have been no war--but they had a rod up their butts because they wanted slavery to spread throughout the nation.
Before the neo-Confederates jump all over me, I remind them that the South was as divided as the North and that I am myself a proud descendant of Southern Unionists (and Repubicans).
Really? That is like saying you are chaste whore.
Maybe it is time to go Paleo-conservative, being fully informed now that we have gone from Lincoln through Teddy and FDR progressivism/socialism to full blown Marxist redistribution.
The Northern industrialists who expanded railroads to the West used slaves-— they were called coolies— and NO one cared a whit about that or Eminent Domain land grabs or any number of extra Constitutional actions of the ruling class.
The peculiar institution was both an asset and a liability for the South. This WAS a battle of the greater wealth holders of both regions, political and otherwise, as they both sought hegemony in Western expansion. And neither side cared a damn about slaves except as they presented as capital labor or a tool for socio-political advantage.
The “innocent” tag refers to the puritanical holier-than- thou anointing of the Northeastern social justice liberals in describing their “holy war” to free slaves. It was anything BUT that, and particularly disgusting to hear this crap repeated by the trust fund diaper baby descendants of Yankee industrialists in their academic sinecures as they live off the proceeds (oh, and secondarily denigrating the religion that produced the “holy war”). The old memes being trotted out against the Southern view are being broken down by facts— inconvenient ones.
It is absolutely hilarious to see, yet again, the marxist-socialists trot out Lincoln to try and paint this absolute “creature” of a present__dent with his characteristics. More of that “triangulation”, and always in a “crisis” (reminds one of Hitler as Hindenburg was dying, joining the job of chancellor and president of Germany- contrary to their constitution— an eerie similarity, that and the antisemitism of obamao).
Deo Vindice.
Good point. "Lost causes" look conservative to people because they lost. People seem to think history would have stopped where it was if the losing side had won. But if they'd won, they'd have reshaped history themselves. And people -- not so very different from those complaining her and now about the union victory a century and a half ago -- would be complaining about how everything went to blazes when the union and Constitution collapsed and we lost George Washington's republic to secession mania.