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The issue of slavery does not explain the reasons for my ancestors fighting for the south, as none of them owned slaves(at least that is what my research tell me). You wouldn't understand. Of course slavery was evil and wrong. EVERYONE in the south knew that blacks just weren't ready for freedom and self sustenance in 1860. History has shown that to be true. THe thought of turning out people with no education or survival skills would be like turning 8 year olds out and telling them to survive. Most former slaves STAYED RIGHT WHERE THEY WERE UPON emancipation, nothing really changed except they became share croppers instead of slaves. If the owners were SOOOOOOOOOO evil do you think they would stay on the plantation post-bellum? YOU ARE JUST AN IGNORANT jerkface and should really STHU. I don't know why I even bother.

Take your reconstructed history and shove it up your tail pipe.

Reading Booker T. Washington's “Up From Slavery”.

Sure, you keep a people ignorant - pass laws against them becoming educated - keep them working from before sunrise to after sunset at back breaking labor - THEN claim that they simply are not ready for freedom!

Slavery was a blight upon not just those held in slavery - but the slave holding society itself.

After emancipation many of Washington's relations did indeed stay on the farm - where they continued to do the work and tend to the children and wash the puke from the the face of the drunkard who inherited the farm, undress him and put him to bed when he stumbled in.

“The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority. Hence labour was something that both races on the slave plantation sought to escape. The slave system on our place, in a large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and self help out of the white people. My old master had many boys and girls, but not one, so far as I know, mastered a single trade or special line of productive industry. The girls were not taught to cook, sew, or even to take care of the house.”

Why were freed slaves or those who escaped the Land of the Whip and the Lash to the North able to be ready for freedom but not Blacks in the South?

Was it because the Blacks of the South were forbidden education by LAW? Because they were forbidden to learn to read and write by LAW? Was it because of the systematic abuse of the Slave by LAW?

Obviously you know NOTHING of the reality of the REAL role of the slave in that economy or you would have to admit that MOST of the skilled and/or mechanical jobs in the South were performed by slaves not by the ridiculous ruling class which owned them. Mostly helpless parasites. The slaves were the Labor class producing the wealth of the South but are not capable of living in freedom? Utterly ridiculous.

Those without survival skills were the decrepit and degenerate ruling class of the South.

Why Mammy went to the city with Scarlett and don’t forget Big Sam left Tara too. Of course, you cannot understand that the system under discussion was evil not all the people trapped in it. Many were stupid and immoral but not all however it is difficult to remain pure when in a cesspool.

See...this thread for about 300 posts before I found it. And I am able to keep out of it. But when I saw the title, I knew you were expecting a missive from me.

No comment...just wanted to say I drove through VA on my way to Mississippi. Nice country down there in the valley.

Have a wonderful weekend, Reb.