Understanding History: Slavery and the American South

EverVigilant.net ^ | 06/09/2005 | Lee R. Shelton IV

[Soliton]

Absolute nonsense. Lincoln was anti-slavery. The republican party was formed as an anti-slavery party. The South seceded because Lincoln was elected ( because the Republican party was anti-slavery).

This article is equivalent to the holocaust denier's crap.

[marty60]

the vast majority of slave owners were not cruel,

ANYONE THAT PRACTICES OR BELIEVES THAT INSLAVING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING FOR ECONOMIC EXPEDIENCY, IS NOT A NICE PERSON. Denying freedom to human beings is not an admirable trait to be herald as benevolence.

But then I guess the Dums want to soften the image of their forefathers.

[blaquebyrd]

"...or those like you who ignore that in favor of an external foe, one easier to battle."

If it's so easy to battle the illegal invaders from the south then why aren't we as a nation joining the battle? I suggest to you that it's easier to sit back and relive/fight the Civil War than it is to stand up as the Minutemen have done and join the fight to protect the nation's sovereignty. Where some may chose to wear the label of Southerner or Northerner I choose American.

[frgoff]

Lincoln was never an abolitionist. Yeah, right. That's why he joined ran for office in the political party formed around one issue and one issue only: ending slavery.

That's why he railed against slavery in the Lincoln-Douglas debates when running for senator. That's why he wrote the emancipation proclamation at practically the beginning of the civil war and simply debated the correct timing to issue it.

That's why the Southern states were furious when he was elected president and determined at that point to secede.

Yeah, all because Lincoln really didn't want to abolish slavery.

This guy is an idiot.

The rest of his arguments are just as stupid. The idea that a state can secede from the Union just because the other states and peoples representatives across the nation do something it doesn't like? This guy doesn't want a Constitutional Republic, he wants 50 sovereign nations under the old Articles of Confederation.

At least he didn't hammer the 'states rights' issue to death sparing me the need to remind him of the all the contradictios the South engaged in with respect to states rights. (Basically they were for it when it promoted slavery, and were against it when it thwarted slavery).

Here's the bottom-line fact. Southern aristocracy traded in human beings as a commodity and fought a war to preserve that practice. End of story.

[4CJ]

The law in question prevented the Confederate government from interfering with the states - they could end slavery within their own state. The Confederacy did enact a law that required that Union slaves captured on Union ships to be returned to the state of origin and freed by that state's Governor.

[F.J. Mitchell]

"How many blacks owned white people?"

Probably not too many in those days, but starting with FDR and coming to fruition during the LBJ regime, they have come to own us all.

[cyborg]

I see where you're going and it's a bit of a flawed comparison.

[Ditto]

Some people cannot grasp the fact that slavery was once a social reality in this country, and at the time of the War Between the States it was practiced in the North as well as the South. In fact, the slaveholding states of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri remained in the Union during the war.

Not this s**t again. First off, in 1860, no one considered Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky or Missouri to be "Northern States". People would have thought you were an idiot if you called any of those states "Northern" All were considered Border States and all were on the South side of the Mason/Dixon line. Three of them were even represented by stars on the Confederate flag and both Missouri and Kentucky had "representitives" recognized and seated by the Confederate Congress and secessionist "governments in exile".

The only difference between those Border states and the 11 Confederate states was they all had relatively small percentages slave populations and their economies did not depend upon slave labor. The same is true for the western counties of Virginia who refused to go along with the secession of that state. There were very few slaves in Western Virginia. In fact, throughout the Confederacy, they was a very direct correlation on a county by county basis on the percentage of slave population and support for secession.

[Ditto]

For example, about one-third of the 10,600 free blacks in New Orleans in 1860 were slave owners.

You can only get that high of a percentage by applying the "one drop rule" and counting French Creoles as black.

[happyathome]

I don't know - violence solved Saddam Hussein fairly permanently. And Hitler.

[happyathome]

Astute observation. I hadn't thought of that.

[happyathome]

No, the real reason was that Britain was militarily engaged in stopping the international trade in the 1860's, and the Rebs were hoping for British recognition.

[sheltonmac]

Lincoln was never an abolitionist. Yeah, right. ... Here's the bottom-line fact. Southern aristocracy traded in human beings as a commodity and fought a war to preserve that practice. End of story.

Are you really that ignorant? Although Lincoln voiced his opposition to slavery, he was not an abolitionist. He would have gladly tolerated slavery if it meant keeping the Union intact. Besides, how do you explain his lack of effort to free the slaves in the North? His Emancipation Proclamation was aimed specifically at slaves in the South.

Do you really believe that poor Southerners would give up their lives in a war just so a small minority of Southerners could keep their slaves? What about the Northern slave owners who, rather than free their own slaves when their states abolished slavery, sold them south of the Mason-Dixon line for a profit? Were they somehow more noble than their Southern counterparts?

[justshutupandtakeit]

Yes I am a UoC alum but know more about the Civil War than you ever will if you believe the pablum the DSs are passing.

[TexConfederate1861]

What a load of CR*P.
You need to take a history course and learn about the South from a neutral source. Slavery wouldn't have lasted, even if the South had won. It just wasn't economically feasible.

As for Lincoln, well, he got what he had coming.

[4CJ]

Lincoln supported a Constitutional Amendment that would have guaranteed slavery to exist forever. He was no abolitionist.

[RegulatorCountry]

"Here's the bottom-line fact. Southern aristocracy traded in human beings as a commodity"

Here's the actual fact: northern money-grubbers traded in human beings, bringing them to the United States, and, before then, to the British New England colonies, as early as 1638. The first state to legalize enslaving Africans was Massachusetts. Persisting in making all of this strictly a "southern" phenomenon is perpetuating a self serving lie.

[justshutupandtakeit]

It was your thesis that slavery would have ended that I referred to. Since the war was DELIBERATELY provoked by the slavers who were determined to expand it that thesis has some heavy sledding to accomplish before becoming true.

Secessionist plotters cared about one thing, Slavery. That was their end all and be all. And they tried to wreck the Union to preserve it.

[TexConfederate1861]

Regardless what the pro-slavery people wanted, slavery wouldn't have lasted.

[sheltonmac]

I think it's more than reasonable to conclude that Lincoln's "anti-slavery" rhetoric was just that--rhetoric.