I’m reading a great book now called General Lee’s Army and it reminds me that “state’s rights” unfortunately became a euphemism for “protect slavery” in that time. Southerners who were not slave owners were whipped into a patriotic frenzy after Harpers Ferry, and it became easy to describe the building war as something it was not... urban north versus rural south, out-of-state dogooders versus locals, Black Republicans (northern whites who wanted abolition) versus southern Democrats... anything but a stubborn defense of slavery.
Sorry, South, but you hitched your star to an evil institution and you went down with it. Slavery could never survive in a free nation and northern busybodies like Harriet Beecher Stowe were simply doing the job your own people were too frightened to do: demand the end of slavery.
Human nature dictates that the guilty will react with violent defensive attack rather than admit the obvious.
I believe in states’ rights but I could never defend slavery. It’s too bad they are confused with each other today.
‘Human nature dictates that the guilty will react with violent defensive attack. . .’
Your post is the type that inflames this discussion.
Your sanctimonious and self-righteous attitude only shows the depravity in your own soul.
None of us were there so no one here is ‘guilty’ as you say, and neither are you more righteous beause of your condemnation. Get off your high horse already.
If I might...
Exactly, “Slavery could never survive in a free nation” so it would have evolved out of the picture. It would have been a question of time. But the abolition movement and the media frenzy wanted quick action, something had to be done, and look at the result, lives lost and the South left in ruins.
It would have been better to have left them alone.