First of all, there were some things about Lincoln I respect. He didn’t buy into the notion that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter on all Constitutional questions, and that is an attitude and belief that I wish Presidents today would take. But overall, yeah, I admit that I don’t think it was absolutely necessary to wage the bloodiest war in our history.
As to the Confederacy and the South; my major bone of contention in all of this is how it has become (in the last 20 yrs or so) almost verboten to have any sort of respect for not just the Confederacy, but for all of the men who fought for it. Respect and admiration for Lee and Jackson, et al, and the thousands who served under them is treated as a sign of being a neo-nazi or something. Republicans like George Allen and Bob McDonnell run away from and apologize for past remarks displaying admiration for these former heroes. Whatever your thoughts on this specific matter, surely you see that it is not just pointless for such groveling, but also counterproductive. Such surrender to pc sensibilities will not win one black vote, and it cedes to the Left the ability to set the parameters for debate and discourse. You might be okay with the attempt to equate the old South with Nazis in the modern popular consciousness, but you might not like the next target.
Otherwise, of course slavery was a huge part of the Confederacy and a major cause of the Civil War. But most Southern whites did not own slaves. Most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves. They might not have held the highest opinion of black people (but neither did Northern whites), but they certainly weren’t fighting and dying so that a wealthy few could own slaves. To them, it was a fight to resist northern aggression. Are we not to consider this? Should they all be damned?
Finally, while your understanding of the history of the Democratic and Republican parties is admirable, I hope you don’t think it has any relevance today. It brings to mind how some conservative like Sean Hannity will engage in pathetic and hopeless attempts to get blacks to consider the GOP by giving us similar history lessons. They point out that Lincoln the emancipator was a Republican; the pro-slavery party was the Democrats, a higher % of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act, Senator Byrd was in the KKK...as if any of that matters today. It doesn’t. Today all that matters is that the Democrats are the party of big government, redistribution of wealth, and racial preferences in all things public. It has become clear that in order to win more than 15 or 20% of the black vote, the GOP would have to adopt the same positions.
Well, wait a minute, Republicans haven’t exactly shrunk govt even when in charge. They have completely surrendered on racial preferences. About the only politician speaking out against preferences is Democrat James Webb, though his statements are largely empthy rhetoric since he votes for one bill after another that either contains preferences (like Obamacare) or that will lead to more preferences (like the DREAM amnesty), and he in fact supports preferences for native born black Americans.
Still, the point remains that to really have a chance with black voters the unfortunate truth is that the GOP would have to as anti-white as the Democrats, and be just as proud of it.
I’m straying here. Sorry. Anyway, I agree that ugly parts of history can’t and shouldn’t be ignored. But it’s gotten to the point now that only the ugly things can be considered. One can’t respect the men who fought for the South or even consider the idea that states had a right to secede without it absurdly being equated to being a white supremacist.
Few things are black and white. The Civil War led to the end of slavery and that was obviously a good thing. But it also put us on the way to a federal government bigger and more powerful than anything the Founders intended.
That's a quaint notion, but I'm not sure there were any other solutions which would have both preserved the union and freed the slaves. I'd be interested in hearing some. Hindsight is 20/20, of course.
As to the Confederacy and the South; my major bone of contention in all of this is how it has become (in the last 20 yrs or so) almost verboten to have any sort of respect for not just the Confederacy, but for all of the men who fought for it.
I totally agree, and do not want to be incorrectly associated with those elements.
Finally, while your understanding of the history of the Democratic and Republican parties is admirable, I hope you don’t think it has any relevance today.
Indeed I do think it has relevance, because the Democratic Party persisted in its racism, disenfranchising, oppressing and murdering blacks for many many many decades after the Civil War, through at least the WWII period.
I have little respect in general for Hannity's shallow analyses, but I totally disagree regarding relevance. If more blacks knew the history of the Democratic and Republican parties from the Civil War era through the Civil Rights era, they would begin to see that they are still being kept on the Democratic plantation of poverty, dependence and malaise.
Maybe then they could understand why MLK was a Republican, and why a higher percentage of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than did Democrats, flawed as it may have been.
How the Democrats have been able to sweep 100+ years of their racist history under the rug, and then garner the undying support of the majority of the black community, is beyond me. I can only suppose that it has to do with the enticing Welfare State which many blacks (and many non-blacks) have become willingly dependent on.
Therefore, IMHO, the history I have referenced is relevant, especially if it is studied in detail over a large expanse of time, and not merely based on one frozen snapshot from long ago.
I have found David Barton's American History in Black and White to be highly informative in exposing the racist core of the Democratic party, which exhibited murderous Tyranny against blacks continuously for a good 100 years after the Civil War.