Posted by tecwrg on 8/10/2017 2:38:00 PM (view original):
Posted by bad_luck on 8/9/2017 11:26:00 AM (view original):
Posted by MikeT23 on 8/9/2017 11:18:00 AM (view original):
Let's not pretend Custer was rogue. He was working on behalf of the US Government.
The same government that killed 600,000+ Americans but didn't see fit to abolish slavery until 1865.
We weren't a very civilized country back in the 1800s. Hell, women couldn't vote until the 1920s.
I don't know how any of that changes the fact that the south was willing to go to war to protect its ownership of people.
I'm guessing that the south didn't secede from the Union because they were trying to provoke a war with the north over slavery. They seceded because they wanted to be able to do whatever they wanted to do without being overruled by the north.
Lincoln did not declare war on the south because he was trying to abolish slavery. He went to war because he felt that the south had no legal standing to attempt to secede from the Union. The CSA was not recognized by the Union, and the war was over bringing them back into the fold.
And while Lincoln was also personally against slavery on moral grounds, he was not in favor of abolishing slavery in the south because he knew that doing so would destroy the southern economy, which NEEDED slavery to survive.
And before anybody gets all pissy and starts throwing around the Emancipation Proclamation as "Lincoln freed the slaves!!!", they should understand what the true purpose of the EP was . . . it was a carrot (or a threat) to try to bring the rebellious southern states back into the Union. If they had stopped fighting and returned, they would have been allowed to keep their slaves. But they didn't, so when the war was over and the south had lost, they lost the backbone of their economy.
These may be uncomfortable and unpopular facts, but they are facts.
You can actually learn things by reading books. You should try it some time. Educate yourself, rather than repeat the rhetoric you learned in elementary school.
I'm guessing that the south didn't secede from the Union because they were trying to provoke a war with the north over slavery.
You're guessing? Seems like seceding and then firing the first shot was a ****** strategy if they didn't want war.
They seceded because they wanted to be able to do whatever they wanted to do without being overruled by the north.
And the primary "do whatever they wanted? Slavery. We know this because they were explicit in the secession documents:
South Carolina:
...A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
Mississippi:
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin…
Texas:
“[Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery–the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits–a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?”
Louisiana:
As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of annexation not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slave holding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery.
Alabama:
Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republican party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as it change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new principles, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions—nothing less than an open declaration of war—for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and. her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans.
Should I keep going?