Dewd, If you're asking, why don't today's Northerners look in their hearts rather than blame 19th century Southerners for slavery, the answer is that most Americans today don't think much about slavery at all. When they do, they recognize it as an American failing, not as a specifically Southern one. First of all, regional categories aren't as important to most modern Americans as they are to those posting on this thread. Secondly, lately there have been stories in the press about 18th century slavery in the Northern states. Thirdly, more and more Americans recognize how deeply involved slavery was involved in America's founding. So it's not like everyone in the North wakes up every day gnashing their teeth about long dead Southern slaveowners.
But when someone starts talking about the poor secessionists, who only wanted to live in peace and freedom, anyone who's interested in American history will be obligated to object or comment if they don't share that simplistic view. There was another side of things that apologists for the Confederacy don't know or don't like to talk about or want to hide. And that point of view deserved a hearing.
But all the same, it's not as though contemporary Northerners blame contemporary Southerners for anything that happened before they were born. And even with regard to the Confederate leaders, they were as much misguided or foolish or reckless as they were villains. I accept that in large part they were fighting for freedom as they understood it. But we can't forever refrain from judging whether their understanding of freedom was the best possible understanding or whether it was at all adequate.
I don't have any great emotional investment in America's 19th century leaders: they were only human, they made mistakes and were involved in some unsavory things. But when someone tries to say that the Northerners were all monsters and that Southern leaders, who were implicated in their own abuses and corruptions, were martyrs and victims, I have to object. Just how America is going to get through this political correctness mess isn't clear, but the Confederate strategy of attacking unionists for violating the rules of 21st century political correctness while excusing secessionists isn't going to work. It's unjust, and frankly, stupid. It's hard to think of a better way to cut the ground out from under the foundations of our national institutions.
If you're talking about why 19th century Northerners condemned Southerners and didn't look for evil amongst themselves, that's a harder question. Stowe was living evidence that some did. John Brown was evidence that others probably didn't. We'd have to go back and look at the documents of the times to get a feeling for what most people must have thought.
Some Northern states had gotten rid of slavery 70 years before Stowe wrote. That abolition was quite an achievement and one that Southerners could have emulated. It might have been arrogant for some Northerners to pride themselves on something their grandfathers did generations ago, but it was human and as natural as taking pride in the Revolution of 1776 or in being born Christians rather than pagans. What's surprising may not be that some Northerners were morally arrogant, but that most weren't.
Besides a dedicated nucleus of abolitionists who saw slavery as a focus of evil and evangelicals who prayed for everyone, there were those who just wanted to live their own lives but saw aggressive slaveholders as a disruptive force. They saw attempts to spread slavery to the territories, recapture runaways, overturn personal liberty laws, acquire new slave lands, reestablish the slave trade as threats to their freedom and way of life. They saw unilateral secession as the collapse of the Constitution, liberty, and the American order. We can argue about whether they were right or wrong. They may well have been too sensitive and easily alarmed. The same is true of Southerners who saw an end to slavery's expansion as an assault on the Southern way of life. But most of those who cared at all about political questions were too caught up in the rush of events to exercise the kind of penitent tolerance that wants.
Jarvis acts as though there were only two responses to 19th century America's moral problem: arrogant self-righteous attacks on slavery or tolerant Christian acceptance of it. But there was a third alternative: cynical complicity in the maintenance of slavery. And perhaps even a fourth: spinless passivity in the face of whatever slaveowners wanted to do.
Now in fact, what came after the Civil War and Reconstruction was a Northern tolerance of however Southerners wanted to arrange their own governments. Most Northerners had more or less accepted this principle before the Civil War, though it didn't extend to secession. Was this better or worse than forthright abolitionism? Was the older Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who accepted whatever states wanted to do including forcibly castration of the simpleminded, better or worse than his younger abolitionist self? I don't claim to know the answer, but things are a lot more complicated than Jarvis wants his readers to think. He plays with ideas of moral superiority and wounded pride, but ignores the difficulties of what we are to do about abuses when we find them in the world.
If only. These threads on FR are proof to the contrary. Ms. Beecher-Stowe's words are still unanswered.
There was another side of things that apologists for the Confederacy don't know or don't like to talk about or want to hide.
Based on the FR threads, that would be the Northern myth-makers attempts to absolve themselves of any regional racist guilt as they blame everything on the South and the Confederacy.
it's not as though contemporary Northerners blame contemporary Southerners for anything that happened before they were born.
lol, what cave have you been living in? No offense man, but that sentence is just make-believe. Take it from this Southerner that very very many Northerners do indeed do just that. And quite a few of them have posted on these FR threads. Not with every post, but it comes out often enough.
I accept that in large part they were fighting for freedom as they understood it. But we can't forever refrain from judging whether their understanding of freedom was the best possible understanding or whether it was at all adequate.
Is the same not true of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and many other slave-owning Founders? I already know your answer, it will be the typical Northern guilt-shift of "they didn't fight to keep their slaves". It's bigger than that. That's what the Northron myth-makers don't understand. An English person opposing the Revolution could easily have made the exact same arguments that Northron myth-makers do, but didn't. They were bigger than that. They had offered freedom to the colonist's slaves if they would oppose the Revolution, just as Lincoln finally ended up doing later in the war. The difference is that England didn't promise "loyal" slave colonies they could keep their slaves like Lincoln did the "loyal" slave-States. The English didn't over-simplify things afterwards to justify their actions and clear their conscience. They were far more honorable.
Just how America is going to get through this political correctness mess isn't clear...
Ain't that the truth. Myth-makers like Jaffa and McPherson certainly fuel the fires of misconception and regional bias.
...but the Confederate strategy of attacking unionists for violating the rules of 21st century political correctness while excusing secessionists isn't going to work.
lol, that "strategy" as you call it, is nothing more than people attempting to point out the hypocrisy of the Northern myth. They don't "excuse" secessionists for it, they point out that the "unionists" were no better. By modern standards, that is. History must be taken in perspective, something the northern myth-makers are unwilling to do.
If you're talking about why 19th century Northerners condemned Southerners and didn't look for evil amongst themselves, that's a harder question. Stowe was living evidence that some did. John Brown was evidence that others probably didn't. We'd have to go back and look at the documents of the times to get a feeling for what most people must have thought.
Most brilliantly stated. I wish that everyone would study history, and not historians.
Some Northern states had gotten rid of slavery 70 years before Stowe wrote. That abolition was quite an achievement and one that Southerners could have emulated.
And what is not ever discussed is that many Northerners had gotten rid of slavery only a decade or less before Stowe wrote. And that some still had it in one form or another. The picture is never drawn clear, and for a reason. To mislead.
Besides a dedicated nucleus of abolitionists who saw slavery as a focus of evil and evangelicals who prayed for everyone, there were those who just wanted to live their own lives but saw aggressive slaveholders as a disruptive force.
lol, so when we discuss the North, 20 percent of the population becomes extrememly significant and represents the whole. right...
...but things are a lot more complicated than Jarvis wants his readers to think.
I wish to G-d you and others would apply this same level of critique to those myth-spinning pets of the Claremont Institute. BTW. Jarvis was only discussing that one book and it's writer's statements about slavery. It was not about the whole war. It was about 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and how IT related to the war.