[Rockingham]

If the Old South and the Confederacy were not for slavery, then why didn't they get rid of it? Again and again, proposals to do so were rejected, with the terms of slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War tightened in order to bar education for slaves and make emancipation more difficult or even illegal. Indeed, if slavery was not the issue, then why was the South so agitated over the issue of fugitive slaves?

Your view of the Klan as a political ploy against Republican governments after the Civil War is entirely too benign. And the Klan era after the Civil War saw not just the political disenfranchisement of blacks but also the adoption of segregation and general racial oppression against them.

Notably, when Klan co-founder Nathan Bedford Forrest rejected the Klan due to its wanton violence and became a public advocate for racial reconciliation, he was widely denounced by rabid race-haters in the Southern press on the same reasoning of white superiority as Alexander Stephens used.

Why devote such attention to this subject? Simply put, realism and historical accuracy matter. Without them, people tend toward fantasy and mythologizing. That is part of how the Old South foolishly let slavery define its future, leading it to Civil War and devastation for its preservation, with an enduring race issue in the aftermath. We ought to see that clearly as a discipline toward seeing the present and future clearly as well.

[FLT-bird]

If the Old South and the Confederacy were not for slavery, then why didn't they get rid of it? Again and again, proposals to do so were rejected, with the terms of slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War tightened in order to bar education for slaves and make emancipation more difficult or even illegal. Indeed, if slavery was not the issue, then why was the South so agitated over the issue of fugitive slaves?

The Slavery issue was only part of the power struggle between the regions. Other issues were the centralization of power vs states rights and of course, the economics.

Your view of the Klan as a political ploy against Republican governments after the Civil War is entirely too benign.

It wasn't a political ploy. It was a resistance movement. People were furious that they had been disenfranchised and that the corrupt occupation governments literally taxing them out of house and home and then stealing whatever money was raised by these hefty taxes.

And the Klan era after the Civil War saw not just the political disenfranchisement of blacks but also the adoption of segregation and general racial oppression against them.

Blacks had never been enfranchised before the Civil War. What you mean is that Blacks got the right to vote and most voters in the Southern states were simultaneously disenfranchised during the Occupation. When the Occupation came to an end after 12 years that was reversed. The Southern states then adopted the same "Black Codes" that had long been on the books already in the Northern states.

Why devote such attention to this subject? Simply put, realism and historical accuracy matter. Without them, people tend toward fantasy and mythologizing. That is part of how the Old South foolishly let slavery define its future, leading it to Civil War and devastation for its preservation, with an enduring race issue in the aftermath. We ought to see that clearly as a discipline toward seeing the present and future clearly as well.

I do not agree that the Southern states "let slavery define their future". Slavery was not what they seceded over and fought for. They could have ensured the preservation of slavery effectively forever had they wanted that, by simply agreeing to the Corwin Amendment.