Posted on 04/09/2002 9:35:02 AM PDT by GulliverSwift
You people are in denial. Without the issue of slavery, there would have been no Civil War. I know you try to justify their fight against the federal government, and I think it's good to fight against today's left-wing trash bureaucracy that runs the federal government. But back then slavery was the catalyst that started the whole thing.
In each of the states that seceded, their official document that announced secession referred to slavery as the number one issue.
Now, the average Southern soldier probably didn't think about owning slaves since he sure couldn't afford one. But the average Joe Southerner didn't finance the war. The war was financed by the wealthy class in the South, and they're the ones who had a stake in preserving slavery. The wealthy controlled all the newspapers, the town councils, and the economy, and they're the ones who controlled what people heard and thought.
Lincoln wanted to keep slavery out of future states that would expand in the West, which would create more Congressman from free states that would tip the scales on the Hill. So Southern governments threatened that if Lincoln won the election, they would secede. And sure enough, the seceded.
There's nothing wrong with hating the federal government, the nosy SOBs and DOBs in the bureaucracy feel it's their job to run everything. But that doesn't mean that we also have to agree with what the South did, even if it was against the federal government. I don't want two different United States--two weak countries--especially not one with slaves.
Yes, it was about slavery. Southern states stated that as their official reason, and the wealthy class in the South, the ones with money to pay for the guns and cannons, wanted slavery as well.
You and liberals have something in common. Both believe that it was about "states' rights." Liberal blacks think it was about that because they hate to think that so many white people would want to stop slavery. You Southerners think it was about "states' rights" because you hate to think that so many people fighting against the federal government could ever be a bad thing.
Usually, it's not.
Tahnks for posting this.
Walt
You're muddying more than that. Both Grant and Lee owned slaves - Grant owned one for a short period 1858-59 and Lee for much of his life through inheritence. Lee freed his last slave in 1862. While Lee didn't think much of slavery he never advocated ending it.
It's the sign of a meaningless existence. They have nothing better to do than live in the past and try to pretend that somehow they had something to do with events 140 years ago.
Were it not for the Civil War, they would have to find some other cause to promote. At least they're not environmentalists.
This was in fact suggested at the time.
From Jim Epperson's website:
J.E.B. DeBow was the publisher/editor of DeBow's Review, a leading antebellum monthly magazine, published in New Orleans. DeBow was a committed pro-slavery Southerner who felt that the North was oppressing the South. He also, contrary to the beliefs of most white Southerners, passionately wanted the South to move away from agriculture and develop an industrial base. He was fascinated by numbers and had served as director of the 1850 United States census and had argued that the collection and distribution of statistics was an important task which required a professional staff, serving not just every ten years but all the time.
"The fact being conceded, that there is a very large class of persons in the slaveholding States who have no direct ownership in slaves, it may be well asked, upon what principle a greater antagonism can be presumed between them and their fellow-citizens, than exists among the larger class of non-landholders in the free States and the landed interests there? If a conflict of interest exists in one instance, it does in the other; and if patriotism and public spirit are to be measured upon so low a standard, the social fabric at the North is in far greater danger of dissolution than it is here.
Though I protest against the false and degrading standard to which Northern orators and statesmen have reduced the measure of patriotism, which is to be expected from a free and enlightened people, and in the name of the non-slaveholders of the South, fling back the insolent charge that they are only bound to their country by the consideration of its "loaves and fishes," and would be found derelict in honor and principle, and public virtue, in proportion as they were needy in circumstances, I think it but easy to show that the interest of the poorest non-slaveholder among us is to make common cause with, and die in the last trenches, in defence of the slave property of his more favored neighbor.
The non-slaveholders of the South may be classed as either such as desire and are incapable of purchasing slaves, or such as have the means to purchase and do not, because of the absence of the motive-preferring to hire or employ cheaper white labor. A class conscientiously objecting to the ownership of slave property does not exist at the South: for all such scruples have long since been silenced by the profound and unanswerable arguments to which Yankee controversy has driven our statesmen, popular orators, and clergy. Upon the sure testimony of God's Holy Book, and upon the principles of universal polity, they have defended and justified the institution! The exceptions, which embrace recent importations in Virginia, and in some of the Southern cities, from the free States of the North, and some of the crazy, socialistic Germans in Texas, are too unimportant to affect the truth of the proposition."
Walt
Yankee go home!
I did, thank you very much. And I'm a much happier person for having done so.
Why do you think that we all have this burning desire to move down south? I spent 9 years stationed in Charleston and while it was OK I can't think of any reason why I would want to move down there again. It's not home to me and never would be, anymore than the North would ever be to you.
The very premis of your post is completely disproven by history, by the words of the men who were there. Revise history elsewhere, we are just a little smarter than the average bear here.
And maybe you should do a little legwork into searching where a lot of that prejudice came from. northern writers visiting the South during the time were suprised that black and white children played togther even commenting that this would not happen up north. Also please consider the black laws only in the north before the war limiting citizenship or even living within the state. Take good ol' Illinois, land of lincoln, who in 1853 instituted a law barring new blacks from moving into the state or Oregon in their state constitution of 1859 barring anyone of color to move into the state(including their words, blacks and 'Chinamen')
The men who wrote these laws were the same men who moved down here after the war and established their own laws during Reconstruction under military rule. So yes it exists, but not without a lot of help from the north
Come on, folks, fighting the federal government is a good thing, but slavery would have been preserved if the Confederacy had won.
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