If you lived in Maine or Vermont, you probably didn't expect African-Americans to move en masse to your state or community. You might have one or two black families in town and wouldn't object to them. You might have read or seen the play of Uncle Tom's Cabin and been appalled by slavery. It was an issue to you. You might even help runaways, and while Canada would be secure destination for them, some would stay in your state and find employment. If you lived in Wisconsin or Michigan the situation would be similar.
If you lived in Ohio or Illinois, by contrast, you might be more concerned about African-Americans crossing the river and moving in next door. You might vote for a party that wanted to keep slavery out of the territories, but you might also vote for a party that wanted to keep slavery in place where it was and protect it and demand that runaway slaves be returned to their masters. That was another way of keeping Blacks out.
Most people were racist by today's standards, but you are making pathological Negrophobia something more common than it was, and ignoring the fact that many of the most racist people had no problem at all with owning slaves.
I try to see things realistically. I have become aware that I have been lied to all my life about what happened and why. I've been led to believe this was all a moral fight, and then you find out how much Northern whites hated black people and didn't care about them at all.
Then you, or your teachers, must be very, very old. Since the 1970s, it's been the fashion to put down Civil War era Northerners as racist above all else. Those of us who went through that have come to see things in a more balanced way.
>>If they were far from the frontier, that’s bad.
>Well yeah. What people do in other lands should be up to the people in the other lands, not meddlesome troublemakers from elsewhere.
>>If they were close to the frontier, that’s bad.
>I'm not sure where you got that from anything i've written. It is the people who occupy the ground who should have a say as to how their society should operate.
You say that opponents of slavery expansion were "meddlesome troublemakers" (as well as racists) if they live far away and racists if they live near-by. You attack both groups, though you deny it now. You don't allow for people having moral objections to slavery expansion. You vilify them for having political objections. And you paint those who objected on other grounds as worse than those who wanted to bring slaves and slavery into the territories. If virtually everyone was racist why make those who objected to slavery out to be more racist than those who were comfortable with slavery, loved it, and saw it as the wave of the future?
If you don't believe both North and South were very racist in the 1860s, then you are not being realistic. Of course they were racist, and unapologetically so.
I never denied that virtually everybody back then was "racist" by modern standards. But nonetheless, many people did object to slavery on moral grounds. The "racist America" narrative that you present denies this. It denies that people who didn't meet today's moral standards could still have had moral convictions that were outraged by slavery.
That being said, many overcame it and went on to see black people as worthy of incorporation into society.
That contradicts what you've been saying for years. Most of the people alive at the time assumed that Blacks and Whites would remain separate and thought all their lives. Some wanted segregation enforced by law. Others just figured that Blacks and Whites had their own lives to live, as Protestants and Catholics or members of different denominations did. You paint Northerners as pathologically anti-Black and ignore the fact that many Northerners even before the Civil War had no problem at all with having a few Black neighbors.
I have never heard of it until recently when it has seemingly become the current big thing for the "Woke" people to bitch about.
You say that opponents of slavery expansion were "meddlesome troublemakers" (as well as racists) if they live far away and racists if they live near-by.
You are adding too many words to what I said. I say people that live in an area have a right to decide what sort of society they want, and people who do not live in an area should mind their own business.
Years ago when I was a conservative activist, I went all across my state for political fights with the other side. I drew the line at the border. I felt that the people in adjacent states should right their own ship, and just as I would regard people coming into my state as an outside interloper, so too would I be regarded as such if I meddled in their affairs.
Now this attitude does not extend to my offering people advice for their states over the internet, but I don't think it's right for me to physically go there and mess around in their elections.
Now if I moved there with the intention to remain, that would be different, because then it would be *MY* state.
You attack both groups, though you deny it now. You don't allow for people having moral objections to slavery expansion.
Slavery was *NOT* going to expand. Fake issue. And in the context of expansion, I don't think their objections were "moral" in the meaning of concern for the well being of slaves.
And you paint those who objected on other grounds as worse than those who wanted to bring slaves and slavery into the territories.
They were motivated by hatred, not love. Is there a worse motive?
I never denied that virtually everybody back then was "racist" by modern standards. But nonetheless, many people did object to slavery on moral grounds.
And the evidence demonstrates this group of people to be a teeny tiny minority who were widely regarded as "kooks" at the time. I don't think I could put it better than Charles Dickens did.
"Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale."
Looking for that quote I ran across this one which I thought was interesting:
"“I’ve heard you have abolitionists here, we have a few in Illinois and we shot one the other day.” Abraham Lincoln, 9/1848.
Is it true? I don't know, but it's pretty funny.
That contradicts what you've been saying for years.
It may contradict what you thought I said, but not from my perspective it didn't.
You paint Northerners as pathologically anti-Black and ignore the fact that many Northerners even before the Civil War had no problem at all with having a few Black neighbors.
They passed awful anti-black laws. You have to have a majority to do that. Also if you look for quotes from prominent Northern men of the time, you can find plenty that show how racist they were.