Posted on 12/26/2003 9:21:31 PM PST by El Conservador
But who was the stereotypical slaveholder? A wealthy, white, southern landholder. The portrait that it was a "white Southerner fighting to keep slaves picking cotton" is not altogether correct. Most of the soldiers in the Southern cause were not slaveholders at all. Most of the primary members of the CSA government and the movers behind secession, on the other hand, were proponents of slavery. You can read it in their speeches. You can see it in their "constitution." It is amply recorded in their letters.
I agree with you that American history is being destroyed by the socialists, liberals , and the PC crowd. I have been careful to differentiate between the real military leaders in the CSA, and the politcal leaders. They were a different crowd and had different motivations. Only a few, such as John Breckenridge, spanned the gap between the military and the political realms. In my mind, Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jackson, and others, were military men of principle, even if their motivation is seen, in retrospect, as wrong. On the other hand, the political leaders, such as Davis, Rhett, Toombs, Stephens, etc, were very much traitors.
One last point. The land which is now occupied by Arlington cemetary was the inheritance of Mrs. Lee. Robert E. Lee never owned it, as I recall.
The European Union can never be viewed as a "nation" because of the vast differences in language, culture, etc. between the client states. It is ostensibly an "economic union." American nationalism based on common language, common heritage, common values, and common experiences pre-dated the Revolutionary War.
In my example, you will never find anywhere where I have said that the European Union is analogous to the pre-Civil War United States. My example was a hypothetical set 20 years into the future.
For one thing, the European Union Constitution has yet to be signed. As you know, that latest fly in the E.U. Constitutional ointment is the issue of voting weight between large and small States. Spain and Poland are now fighting to keep more voting weight for small States and France and Germany are fighting to have less voting weight for the small States. An identical issue arose and was dealt with at the U.S. Constitution Convention.
American Colonial heritage may have been formed in common experiences during the Revolutionary War but, likewise, European Union heritage has been formed in the shared tragedy of the suffering of World War II and the Cold War.
In regards to "shared experiences prior to the American Revolutionary War", that was made up, to a great extent of escaping the religious persecutions of earlier generations with Puritan New England and the Cavalier South coming from opposite ends of that spectrum.
In regards to shared "culture", New England culture was based on a Puritanical, maritime and then industrial free-labor society while the Southern culture was based on a Cavalier, agrarian, slave-labor society. That is a vast cultural gulf that will not be found today between, say, Spain and Germany.
Although it is true that the European Union is, at the current momement, more of an economic union than a political union, it is their stated goal to form a political union. That goal took a Spanish and a Polish torpedo to the port side earlier this month but both France and Germany are determined to keep trying to achieve a political European Union nation-state with, of course, Germany and France as the dominant entities.
As time passes, it is very plausible to see the European Union fall apart before they ever sign a Consitution but it is also very plausible to see the birth of a political European Union, complete with a Constitution ratified and signed by all members.
If such a European Union Constitution comes to pass, it may very well address all potentially catastrophic issues.
If such a European Union Constitution comes to pass, howver, it may also very well repeat the grave error of the U.S. Consitutional Convention where elephants such as the incompatibility of a slave-based culture and a free-labor based culture and the entire issue of the legality of seccession were swept under the rug so that future American generations, say, in the 1850's, 1860's or 1870's could peacefully resolve those issues that nobody wanted to hash out, once and for all, in 1787.
The hospital in Los Angeles originally named in his honor is now The Martin Luther King Jr. Drew Medical Center; hard to find a black patient there or someone who speaks English, but boy, do they have lots of pregnant women recently arrived - hallways full.
Oh my Lord, that is the best suggestion I've ever read. Brilliant, succinct and funny as hell. LOL.
Sort of redundant qualifications, for the most part. To vote one had to be free, white 21, male, and a property owner. Neither slaves nor their upkeep were cheap. Land, for the most part, well employed, was a prime source of wealth. In lieu of mechanized farming (yet to come), a large labor force was needed to work the land.
Then, as today, the more sucessful farming operations ended up absorbing the inefficient or poorly run ones.
It stands to reason that slave-owners, overall, had those characteristics. Southern, because of the growing season/climate.
Even today despite the socialist/divisionist rhetoric about the "rich white man" you see few Bugattis in trailer parks.
Please note that rampant abuse of slaves would not get the work done, nor done well. Even wartime slave-labor (when being shot was a distinct possibility) managed to be inefficient, wasteful, and on occasion to perpetrate sabotage. Healthy, happy, positively motivated labor forces still work better than abused ones working out of fear. Any disciplinary measures undertaken against individuals had to be clearly appropriate and justified.
The real pity is that even though common sense indicates that abuse was not widespread, a NOVEL, with all the era's taste for hyperbole, is studied as history and accepted as the normal paridigm. That this NOVEL has been used for over 100 years to foment hate and derision against an entire region, hate and derision which continue to this day, simply amazes me.
Next, someone will be using Spartacus to justify treating the Italians shabbily...
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