Posted on 11/21/2006 5:23:06 AM PST by SJackson
The best explanation I can give for the whole slavery vs. economics argument for the start of the WBTS is that both sides are right. It was largely an economic and political war, but slavery was tightly wrapped up into the Southern plantation economy. Thinking that the War started because of some moral component regarding slavery is a simplification...not many other people than the ardent abolitionists really thought there was that much wrong with it. Even Lincoln didn't turn the War into an anti-slavery crusade until it was politically expedient to do so in 1863.
The agrarian economy down here was based (too much) off of slavery. Threatening the expansion of slavery into the new territories threatened the power of the elite down here, and the economic issues are what pushed things over the edge. And once Fort Sumter happened, and the war really started, then patriotism toward their native states became the primary motivation for the common men of the South to fight.
Maybe that's a simplification (I'm sure it is, I'm no historian) but I've always believed that the economics vs. slavery argument is kind of specious, because you can't completely separate the two.
}:-)4
Oh . . . so that's why most American Jews are still "yellow dog" Democrats!
Some find it peculiar that a people once held in slavery by the Egyptians, and who celebrate their liberation every year at Passover, would fight for a nation dedicated to maintaining that institution.
Why does everyone have to say something like this? The Torah itself, in the very book recounting the Exodus from Egypt, explicitly permits and regulates slavery. If this wasn't considered ironic at the time, why is Jewish Confederatism considered ironic today???
We have all been taught too well how to disparage each other.
Some day....just one day, it would be a pleasure to not hear how America, or Americans are evil; to not hear how much we suck.
Obviously, today is not that day.
BS. Freedom vs Slavery was the 1860 conflict.
Slavery might have lasted almost into the 20th century as it did in Brazil.
The southern states forced Lincoln's hand by seceding over what they thought he might do over slavery. The war began as a war over secession, not slavery. In fact the Civil War did not end slavery in any of the Union states or Union-occupied states--the 14th amendment did.
It was only the South which fought about Slavery not the North. Preservation of the Union was the North's goal.
If there is, why is Wal Mart enjoying so much success?
"Preservation of the Union was the North's goal."
What was the Constitutional basis for that goal?
Slavery was the defining characteristic of the South and led to its rise and fall. Americans who fought against slavery and who take pains not to glorify the Slavers have no reason to apologize. Democrats on the other hand have plenty to apologize for including the 100 year reign of racism following the Slaverocracy's defeat.
"Slavery was the defining characteristic of the South and led to its rise and fall."
My, my, my ... got 'cher simplistic hat on again today, I see.
Sort of a "perfect storm" of events all coinciding together.
That cannot change the fact that the ONLY reason the South attacked the Union was because of slavery. Any other claim is either mere rhetoric or a complete lie.
Unlike the Founding Fathers (who almost universally considered slavery an evil) the Slavers considered it a positive good. Thus, they had NO inclination to do away with it, have it limited, have it criticized.
THEY were the ones who attacked the Union.
It's intended to be a spoof of "Pride of the Yankees," the title of an inspirational movie about sports hero Lou Gehrig.
If that were the case, the Emancipation Proclamation would have freed all slaves, not just those in the 'South'. In fact, the 'North' had slaves before the 'South', and kept them after those in the 'South' were free.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the 'underground railroad' did not end until it reached Canada. There was no freedom for slaves in the 'North'.
It remains fashionable to paint the US, and especially the south, as the prototypical bastion of slavery. Being so passionately fashionable wrongly convinces the rest of the world the we are the worst slavers of all time. In fact, quite the opposite is true.
The ante-bellum South was very different from the post-bellum South. It was an almost European feudal society dominated by high church Anglicans and Catholics (I have a theory that this is why most Black clergy wear vestments). The "Bible Belt" didn't emerge until after the Civil War. The ancestor of today's Bible Belt is not the ante-bellum South (as liberals like to maintain) but Puritan New England and the northern Great Awakenings (eg, New York's "burned over district). It was in the ante-bellum North that one found shouting, spasms, and the other phenomena now associated with Southern "holy rollers." Liberals also routinely ignore the inconvenient fact that the victims of Southern racism shared the religious beliefs of the perpetrators, so scientifically "Biblical literalism" is eliminated as a "cause" of white racism and violence.
The original post-war KKK was very different from its twentieth century imitators. It had Catholic and Jewish members (including Dr. Simon Baruch, personal physician to Jefferson Davis and father of Bernard Baruch) and didn't burn crosses. The cross-burning was initiated by Col. Simmons' post WWI Klan based on a fictional cross-burning in Thomas Dickson's novel The Clansman (which served as the basis for the motion picture The Birth of a Nation).
Unfortunately, for all the philo-Semitism of the ante-bellum and Civil War South (and the immediate post-bellum era), anti-Semitic populism eventually reared its head and even today is a component of many neo-Confederate and Southern identity groups (many of whom engage in virulently socialist anti-"banker" rhetoric and clamor for the Northern Hamiltonian protectionism their ancestors fought against). I regard these anti-Semitic, quasi-fascist "Southern" and "Confederate" movements as posers.
"It was an almost European feudal society dominated by high church Anglicans and Catholics"
This is incorrect, as far as NC is concerned.
You will never hear me call all Americans any such things or America. That does not mean I feel the same about those who attacked the greatest nation on the face of the earth in order to perpetrate a tyrannical regime opposed to everything America was said to stand for.
Those who put an end to such tyranny are to be praised as highly as men can be praised. They were the spiritual descendents of the great men who founded this nation. Men to whom the ideas of secession, disunion, separation were abominations. Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and William T. Sherman made sure that great nation was sustained and its power and prosperity are the fruits of their labor.
"William T. Sherman"
A murderous, mentally unstable thug, who should have followed his wife's wishes and remained in a sanitorium.
The Constitution was the creation of the American People and provides all the necessary power to defend the Union it created.
There are explicit references to the ability of the federal government to put down insurrections, and rebellions.
You perhaps believe the Constitution has no more meaning than an Islamic wedding?
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