Posted on 04/15/2010 1:16:02 PM PDT by wolfcreek
Ten years ago, I received an e-mail from a reader who signed him or herself "J.D." "I am a white racist," wrote J.D., "a white supremacist and I do not deny it."
From that, you'd suspect J.D. had nothing of value to say. You'd be mistaken. J.D. wrote in response to a column documenting the fact that preservation of slavery was the prime directive of the Confederacy. "I was most pleased to see you write what we both know to be the truth," the e-mail said. "I never cease to be amazed at the Sons of Confederate Veterans and similar 'heritage not hate' groups who are constantly whining that the Confederacy was not a white, racist government ..."
That argument, noted J.D. with wry amusement, plays well with "white people who want to be Confederates without any controversy."
(Excerpt) Read more at news-record.com ...
If you go back to original sources you will always, always, always find that the Civil War was about slavery.
The link at 50 was singularly unimpressive.
Yet Leonard Pitts is perfectly willing to accept slavery as a necessary condition for 50% of the population—the percentage who pay no tax and receive government assistance to live.
They are the modern day slaves—they rely on subsidies to survive, they are unable to make their own way by their own labor. THIS subclass is perfectly okay in Leonard Pitts’ view.
I don’t care what site it is. The article is what I was interested in.
I’ve seen many other sites that say the same. The European bankers saw a chance to take control of/manipulate our nation and did so.
The Rothschild family aren’t even Jewish. They are Khazars.
How did I know you, with your made up mind, would say that?
I believe that Washington Territory (ID,OR,WA,NV?) was a slave territory (1843 or so)
Sorry. Read the Articles of Secession, where they explain in their own words their reasons for leaving the union.
Its slavery, and in particular, the need to extend slavery to the western states in order to preserve it.
That was the rub. In the interest of peace, Lincoln was willing to allow slavery to remain in the states where it already existed to die a natural death but he would not allow it to extend into any new territories; the south saw (and so stated) that if they could not extend slavery into new territories it would eventually die out as they were outvoted in congress.
They both saw the same thing; that if it could not extend into the new territories it would eventually die. Lincoln saw that as an acceptable compromise and the south saw it as a poison pill.
Nope.
George Washington signed legislation enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwest Territory in the 1780’s...
Yeah, crackpot fringe sites.
The Rothschild family aren’t even Jewish. They are Khazars.
Wow. Are you one of those that claims all Ashkenazi Jews aren't really Jews?
Leonard Pitts, accepting as truth the words of a racist white supremicist.
The Civil war was fought because the North didn’t want the South to be it’s own country. The South wanted to be it’s own country because it feared that by requiring new states to be anti-Slavery, there would end up being too many anti-slave states, and there would be a constitutional amendment to ban slavery, or at least laws making it difficult.
During the war, the North still had slavery, and Lincoln only freed slaves in the Confederacy, NOT the Union.
It was only after the war that we banned slavery.
So as wrong as it would be to suggest the Civil war wasn’t about slavery, it is also stupid to say it was about banning slavery.
Because the link went to little more than a blog entry. It was one step above complaining about the “evil jews” controlling international banking, or the Illuminati.
It was unimpressive. No more, no less. If you wish to make a case you need more than that. Slavery was the issue.
Sorry. That’s why I gave you the speeches from the President and Vice President of the Confederacy at the start of the Civil War. It was the clearest snapshot of the motives from the time itself, not the revisionism afterwards.
He’ll probably tell you next that you aren’t really Catholic because the Irish only converted to Catholicism 1300 years ago.
You’re right - something about the territory stuck in the back of my mind and off-hand thought it had to do with slavery one way or other ....
Interesting side note: was it really all about slavery?
You betcha!
Because the north was wanting to force abolition on them but the North would have done nothing but talk if the South had not tried to secede.Hence it wasn’t slavery it was secession that caused it to escalate to war.
Americans became convinced very early on that successful plantation agriculture was dependent upon slave labor. This strongly held belief traces its origins to the introduction of tobacco to the Virginia Company. Tobacco cultivation did not fare very well with endentured servants (mostly from England). They worked grudgingly and once freed from their indenture, did not choose to work the tobacco field. Efforts to use Indian slaves fell short because the Indians could just walk away and go home.
Only after the Portugese introduced Black slaves into Virginia did plantation agriculture catch on. Tobacco flourished, followed by Rice, Indigo, Sugar, and eventually cotton. Many who were morally opposed to slavery could not see a way to end it. Of course, the South was not really interested in ending slavery, they were interested in preserving it and wrapped the practice in their economy, culture, way of life, natural order of things, etc.
Slavery would have ended in the South, as it had in the North, when it became economically unecessary and the moral arguments against it prevailed. That probably would have occurred in the 1870’s or 1880’s, but the anti-slavery movement had changed the moral attitude of the civilized world and there was no patience for waiting.
The Civil War was about slavery, no doubt. But, it wasn’t just about slavery.
Thomas Jefferson and Geo. Washington owned slaves so your argument is absurd. I’m afraid you are the one ignoring history. If slavery had been a big part of the northern economy it would not have been abolished. The North got upset about slavery only because it did not play a role in their economy.
Exactly! And of course they were dead wrong to have done so.
No, it wasn’t just about slavery. But, slavery was the main cause.
I find no fault in your reasoning except for the potential alternative of slavery fading as it did in South America. Many slaves were skilled craftsman and not simply unitelligent field workers. Such a skilled workgroup could have played a part in industrializing the South. What alternative future would have come had the North not gained in Congress or Lincoln elected, is simply specultation. I envision that it would not have faded, but quite the reverse. But that is the realm of fiction writing.
I don’t think it likely that it would have faded as a matter of course. Government action was required to end it. I do believe that a peaceful abolition would have occurred before the end of the 19th century. The big stumbling block was the equity of personal estates that included slave property. Very few would have surrendered that wealth voluntarily, and their heirs were there to pressure them against it.
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