Saturday, July 11, 2015

It wasn't about slavery


7 comments:

pdwalker said...

History is written by the victors

Anonymous said...

Three quotes from George Orwell's book '1984'...

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."


LoFan John said...

It was about slavery. That wasn't the only issue; there's never just one reason for something that big. There was Northern hypocrisy, there was the feeling that the cotton states were being used as an economic engine and that northerners were refusing to let go of the controls, etc. (Read about current Catalonian separatism) Let's not pretend, after all these years, that it wasn't also about slavery as well. The contemporary words of all too many secessionist agitators made that clear. We don't have to join in and continue the oversimplification.

Anonymous said...

"Union means so many mlions a year loss to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many many other evils... The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel." Charles Dickens, December 1861

JeremyR said...

read every declaration of secession. Every one names Slavery. The central government at that time was WEAK.
As far as states rights, the South opposed states rights. Part of their problem was that Kansas was coming into the union as a free state. There is a long history regarding bloody Kansas. The democrats rewrote the story of the Civil war to mask their racist intents.
I don't know where the Dickens quote comes from, I seriously doubt it was real since he was an abolitionist. He was also an English citizen, and his two trip to the Americas were in 1842, and after the War in 1867.
We also need to remember that the north underwent the second industrial revolution beginning in the 1840's. The development of many inventions that mechanized farming meant that the north was not dependent on king cotton. The south was also being changed by the revolution. the invention of the gin would have brought about the end of slavery by 1900.
Please, lets quit believing democrat history and learn the truth.
I have no problem with the southern cross, for many it is as much an antigovernment overreach symbol as the III% or molon labe.

Anonymous said...

states rights was the underlying cause....fact: only a max of 10% ( and more like 3%) of those serving in the Confederate army owned slaves....so they risked all for that 3 to 10%? I don't think so...it is unfortunate that slavery was involved,but it was....the south hung their hat on the wrong peg....AND, until Lincoln decided he needed the abolitionist faction to win the war, he didn't care politically (although he personally hated slavery) one way or another. His STATED goal was to "preserve the union"( ie,Washington's control over the south).....

vaquero viejo

Anonymous said...

Yes, one of the major causes of the Civil War was the Democratic Party's desire to protect slavery.

If you do not believe me, then you should believe Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President of the CSA. He plainly stated that the cornerstone of the Confederacy and the immediate cause of sucession was slavery:

"But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/

States Rights? Yes, states "rights" to expand slavery into the territories.

There were three main grievances the south had against the North, and Republicans in particular 1) The south opposed tarriffs, the Republicans favored them; 2) the south opposed the federal gov spending on infrastructure in the states, the Republicans favored it 3) the democrats wanted to expand slavery to all new territories, to ensure slave states would not be outvoted in congress; Republicans were opposed to slavery, and Lincoln was opposed to allowing any new slave states in the Union. The Democrats were also furious at northern states that refused to enforce the fugitive slave act.

Several states issued "Declarations of Causes" for succession. I suggest you all read them. You will notice the frequent mention of slavery:

http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html?referrer=https://www.pinterest.com/

Of course, the North didn't fight the war to free the slaves, but the South sure did start the war to protect their chattel slavery. Both sides had totally different goals.