[wardaddy]

Plenty of Christians throughout history owned slaves. It was considered more humane than simply annihilating a vanquished foe. Christians from Popes to Bishops to many of our founders and so forth owned slaves...Abraham and many Biblical figures had slaves ...maybe when you pass on you can tell him what time it is too..lol . The Bible has as much or more scripture about humane treated slavery as acceptable as it does condemning it. It's about context...today slavery is almost universally condemned unless to a Federal master but that was not always so. The roots of anti-slavery in the US came not from Christians so much as from outliers like Quakers like Franklin or Deists like Paine...it wasn't till 1830s or so when more Northern churches than not opposed slavery. This argument about who's better ...Radical Republicans who wanted punitive Reconstruction or Southern Democrats who opposed them...and this gets back to issues that fueled the fear most white southerners had....ala Haiti and Nat Turner and other butchery they knew had occurred in the Americas and Cape Verde. What to do with all these black ex slaves suddenly freed after servitude and in places where they were a majority of the population, little law and order unless imposed by lovely Union occupation corps or Freeman's Bureau where carpetbaggers had descended to exploit the newly freed but grossly unprepared blacks and whites were largely disenfranchised in coincidentally precisely those states where blacks were most numerous...South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana...and most whites had lost many male family members or they were crippled from wounds and broke or destitute and at the mercy of occupation forces, interlopers looking to exploit them, radical in DC looking to abuse them and get revenge and impose black legislative and judicial power that would neuter them forever and at the same time make blacks the same pawns they now are for the Dems...some freedom...blacks got the raw end from both sides but which group did they linger on with even after all that...pray tell...the great black migrations didn't happen for several generations...who do you think they felt more comfortable staying with...their old masters or white yeoman class or heading up north...and where are they going today?...why back down here...most stayed here anyhow.

If Yankees are so warm and fuzzy and welcoming to black folks then why is that? Explain that to me...only about 20% of blacks ever moved up north and then only when more industrialization opened up more work up north...as late as 1900 90% of blacks were still down South...automobile industry brought them north...same as it did some of my white kin to Detroit in the same time. So why did they stay? Don't tell me they didn't know better...folks were migrating like all getout in those days...maybe they did not feel so welcome up there eh?

Now if you had just come home to Union occupation and all that came with it after 4 long hard years of fighting a brutal war...what would you do? Like they had much choice..they either had to combat the forces trying to extinguish them as a political force or worse or they could fight back and wait for the Radicals to lose power and more sensible folks to come back which is what they did. I don't completely condemn the first white resistance and all it's forms like I would the nationwide movements after DW Griffiths film but I do understand why they resisted in Reconstruction. It was either that or move somewhere. I didn't see the North running down there to bring all those blacks they had just "freed" to take them north to the land of plenty. No they didn't. They opted to further crush whites and establish blacks as lackeys on the 40 acres and a mule promise. If black rule really doesn't work anywhere today why would you think it would have then? I know you think that's a loaded question but really...is there any black run city in the US that runs well? Not that I know of. I'm open to being wrong. I've lived in black culture for 53 years and as a rule their politicians suck. Whites feared black rule and still do....even Yankees. I lived in Mahattan for 8 years...it was very segregated then...gentrification has pushed many blacks out..but just look at any racial demographics map and you can see how it's pocket segregation now

Another thing.....biggest myth of the Rebel side (mine)....is that slavery had nothing to do with it...it did but more precisely the expansion of it...but most southerners of whom only half at most owned slaves and most like many of my kin only had a few..they fought because they were invaded..."cause you are here"...the famous Harper's interview line On your side it's the canard that the Federals fought to free the slaves. Fact is most Yankees who often came from a completely different Euro stock than the older line Southerners had little experience with blacks (like today on FR..lol) and were as bigoted if not more than we were. Union fought to preserve it...the Union..admirable enough...no quibble there but it never happened like in Turner's movie with darkies lectures and all that BS.

My own personal views on this as a descendant of slaveowners and CSA vets and dead..some famous..some not...is this. The Civil War was a tragic perfect storm that no one had fixed in time when they should have..like Islam and the Budget today...and immigration. Lots of good men on both sides died because both sides more or less equally failed. I like Lincoln's terms but his election helped start a war not avert it and there is no doubt to me he is the biggest reason for our Leviathan today than anyone..but like Nathan here said...it might not coulda been helped given the circumstances..hence I ambivalent on him...far better than the radicals though.

Slavery should be viewed in context. Treatment of slaves should be as well in contrast to life in tropical Africa and the concept of freedom there and just the times in general and the history of slavery. No one here thinks slavery today is justified....no one on this board but it's just too easy a platitude and what went on in America over slavery from our inception and the progression of it from New England to the South after the gin all bears weight considering. Just claiming slavery is wrong is the way kids argue..sure we all know that but that does little to explain how it all went from 1617 on .

course like butthead said earlier ..just hang all slaveowners and their wives and kids and we could have avoided all that but what about all those important folks including my Rhode Island ancestor Stephen Hopkins...slaver too...could he like get a Yankee waiver maybe? think of this country without Wawshington or Madison or Tom or Patrick ..and why stop there...Hell, lets kill all white or mostly white slaveowners...that would make the Americas today nearly all Indian and black except for some of New England and Sitka...now wouldn't that be something. You're a sweet guy and polite but a few of your kinsmen here are just plain nuts...like John Brown on meth.

[af_vet_rr]

Plenty of Christians throughout history owned slaves.

And Christians and Jews used to only get their haircuts a certain way, and not mix fabrics, used to not get divorced, used to not touch or eat pork and shellfish, used to not mix seeds in a field, used to not get tattoos, used to not wear gold. There are many other examples.

Outside of a few Jewish and Christian groups, as a whole we recognized those things as foolish or based on a lack of knowledge, such as knowing how to prepare pork so you don't get sick. Back before they understood food preparation, it made sense to ban things like the eating of pork since improperly prepared pork could kill you or cripple you.

It's the same thing with slavery - just because somebody owned slaved 2000 years ago or didn't eat pork doesn't mean that carried over to modern times.

If Yankees are so warm and fuzzy and welcoming to black folks then why is that? Explain that to me...only about 20% of blacks ever moved up north and then only when more industrialization opened up more work up north...as late as 1900 90% of blacks were still down South...automobile industry brought them north..

You answered your own question - economics. These were ex-slaves. They didn't have the money to just up and move to the north and many didn't have the education/skills/jobs to put aside enough money to move to the north and look for jobs. The Democrats did a fine job of keeping them down, and it wasn't hard since 1900 was only 35 years after the Civil War.

That's been the case throughout history - when you have a group of people who are unable to move up in class because of location or economic issues, or other issues it's going to haunt them for generations. Just look at the Appalachians. Things are much better for that region now, but I can remember going through that area quite a bit in the early 1960s and feeling like I had stepped back in time a good 50 or more years.