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Sorry, but I am almost twice 35 years old, a Louisville native, have lived in Kentucky for all but five years of my life - and have always pronounced it "Louavul". No cute weather "girl" influence here.
I think you are the exception. And with your love of the genteel southern ways of Lexington, it is not surprising. The fact is, Louisville was never a true southern city, and still isn't true south but yes it is a good hybrid of southern and midwest.
I live in the NE suburbs and can go a week before I hear a "southern accent." If you grew up in Louisville as you say, boy has it changed and done a complete 180 from your days when it was literally a declining rust belt industrial factory town in the 1970s.
Slavery was a non issue at the beginning of the Civil war. The Civil war was instigated over excess taxation. It was the North that elevated it to include slavery.
That's completely false. The Civil War began when the Southern States chose to secede from the Union, and when they gave their reasons for seceding they specifically identified slavery. Here are excerpts from several states' declarations of causes for seceding from the Union, which can be found in their entirety together at this link.
Georgia:
Quote:
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.
Quote:
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.
Mississippi:
Quote:
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:
Quote:
For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.
By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments. They have proclaimed, and at the ballot box sustained, the revolutionary doctrine that there is a 'higher law' than the constitution and laws of our Federal Union, and virtually that they will disregard their oaths and trample upon our rights.
South Carolina:
Quote:
The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
I could quote more, but there's no reason to waste the time and the keystrokes. The fact is, the Confederate states made no effort to hide their reason for leaving the Union, and in fact they shouted it from every rooftop they could find every chance they got - slavery. Slavery, slavery. Slavery, slavery, slavery, slavery, slavery. They made no secret of it at all, and for anyone in this day and age to look back on that historical record and somehow claim that it had nothing to do with slavery is inexcusable.
The Confederacy started the Civil War by seceding from the Union, and they seceded from the Union because of slavery. Therefore, slavery is the reason the Civil War was fought. It's just that simple. That may make some people uncomfortable to have to admit, but if it makes you uncomfortable, perhaps you should question whether you're picking the right side of the issue.
I think you are the exception. And with your love of the genteel southern ways of Lexington, it is not surprising.
As a Louisville native I find that to be completely and totally absurd. And the weather girl...please. You simply make stuff up about this city and to be quite honest it comes across as being disrespectful to the people of Louisville and its culture.
It isn't erasing history.It is dispensing with the glorification of slavery and the civil war.
If you go to Germany, they make no secret of their Nazi past. There are plaques everywhere telling and reminding Germans, and tourists that "on this sight on 9 December 1943 900 people were deported to (fill in the concentration camp.
Then there are the camps themselves. In Germany, Dachau and Buchenwald have not been demolished. They are open for tours. Where it is clearly stated that these were places of evil and torture.
They do NOT give tours of the fancy houses on Officers Row, outside of Buchenwald that honors the lavish lifestyles of the evil SS officers and their wives, who frequently took pleasure in tormenting inmates in their spare time.
There is a CLEAR DISTINCTION between GOOD and EVIL. And yes, all Nazi monuments have been destroyed and taken down.
I recently visited Louisville, and I found it to be a beautiful, fun city. However, the fact that there was at least one confederate monument was disconcerting.
Why not re-frame the whole Confederate - Slavery issue in Louisville - and NOT destroy monuments - but show them in CONTEXT. And stop revising history.
Or tear them down and do that anyway...
As a black man, I despise these. I feel like a Jew walking past a statue of Himler with a bunch of Germans telling my to chill the heck out.
Slavery was a non issue at the beginning of the Civil war. The Civil war was instigated over excess taxation. It was the North that elevated it to include slavery.
As well documented in post 52, the Confederate states largely seceded over slavery. Lincoln clearly had no intention at the beginning of the war to overturn slavery. He, like most Republicans, were adamant that slavery would not be allowed in the territories, which was a great offense to slave-owning Southerners who wanted to take and use their "property" wherever they saw fit.
Confederates saw the inevitability given rapid population growth and strong abolitionist movement in the northern states, that Congress increasingly would rein in slavery and perhaps even impose increased civil rights for African Americans. The seceding states wanted nothing to do with even this possibility.
As the war was fought, it became increasingly clear, such as in New Orleans, that enforcing the rights of slave owners was inconsistent with the successful prosecution of the war, especially when the northern abolitionists, the strongest supporters of the Union war effort, clearly viewed the demise of slavery as a key goal of the conflict.
Lincoln came to realize this, and so issued the Emancipation Proclamations after Antietam relatively early in the war.
As slavery had been outlawed in Europe, by making the elimination of slavery a Union war goal, Lincoln also significantly lessened the possibility of European recognition and support for the Confederacy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe33
If all your info was correct, Blacks would have been full citizens of the US from the day the war ended and their rights would have been protected like all others. However this didnt happen until the 1960's. So any reference to the North being the "Good Guys" wanting to free the slaves just is ludicrous.
Where did you learn this baloney? Hopefully not in a public school. You seemingly are totally ignorant of the Reconstruction Era, when African Americans in the South experienced political, economic and social rights not seen again until the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.
Once whites regained political power in the former states of the Confederacy, they passed Jim Crow laws and made their top political goal in Congress the end of federal Reconstruction laws and enforcement. Unfortunately, the assassination of James Garfield, a dedicated abolitionist and pro-African American, likely aided the efforts of the former Confederate states immensely.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe33
Even today you find the most abuse of blacks in the northern states.
What are you talking about? Apart from a few northern states, including sadly Ohio (thanks in recent years to neo-Confederate Republicans who generally seek to subvert democratic rights of minorities at any opportunity), overt racial gerrymanders don't exist in the former Union states while they are pervasive in the former states of the Confederacy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe33
The north found that the Indentured servitude of the Irish and other European immigrants was much more profitable than the keeping of slaves. Slaves were expensive. You didnt want to risk them in some industrial application when you could just get some Irish to work for pennies, then steal back those pennies from them by over charging them food and board.
Indentured servitude had largely disappeared in the U.S. well prior to the Civil War, due partially to law changes. Very few 19th century and subsequent immigrants to the U..S. were indentured servants. In southern states, indentured servants were replaced by slavery, contradicting your entire argument.
Although the conditions of many U.S. immigrants were abysmal, due to good education systems (certainly not afforded to southern African Americans) and actually good wages (there generally were perpetual labor shortages in northern states), obviously northern immigrants had good upward mobility.
Abusive company towns, especially in the textile industry, also were characteristic of the South.
Your revisionist and inaccurate history is typical of Confederate apologists.
I think you are the exception. And with your love of the genteel southern ways of Lexington, it is not surprising. The fact is, Louisville was never a true southern city, and still isn't true south but yes it is a good hybrid of southern and midwest.
I live in the NE suburbs and can go a week before I hear a "southern accent." If you grew up in Louisville as you say, boy has it changed and done a complete 180 from your days when it was literally a declining rust belt industrial factory town in the 1970s.
Sorry, you misunderstood my background - I have called Lexington my hometown since the early 1950s, but as my parents lived in Louisville for around fifteen years prior to that, we continued to visit good friends there regularly, along with shopping and attending various cultural and sporting events in Louisville. But I did not live there during the 1970s - your math is off. I lived in Cincinnati and Lexington during that decade. I lived in Louisville as a very small child, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I agree that the city has changed drastically since those days, but I still remember the thriving downtown shopping area and wonderful department stores, along with beautiful city parks (which thankfully, are still part of the Louisville scene and a great asset).
But my family retained its strong ties with Louisville, and like me, both my parents pronounced it "Louavul". As did and do their long-time Louisvillean friends, and as do my own friends from Louisville - other than a few who are recent transplants, and most of them make the effort to align their pronunciation of the city's name with the most common local pronunciation as soon as they realize the difference.
Actually, I'll be seeing several Louisville friends later this week at a social event and will ask them their opinion about this. Most of them are natives or very long time residents of Louisville - should be interesting.
In fact, a rather ancient Kentucky joke is to ask an out-of-stater whether the capital of Kentucky is pronounced "Lewis-ville" or "Louavul". Of course, the answer is....Frankfort!
But most Louisvilleans, Lexingtonians, and other Kentucky natives and long-time Kentucky residents pronounce Louisville as I do: "Louavul". It has nothing whatsoever to do with Louisville being more Southern or Midwestern, or what you inaccurately describe as my "love of the genteel southern (sic) ways of Lexington" - it's just how it is.
You've noted elsewhere that many residents of Louisville's NE suburbs are transplants. I think that goes a very long way towards explaining the lack of Southern accents in this area, and the newness of these people to the area also explains their pronunciation of "Louisville" as "Louieville". They may not also realize that this pronunciation immediately identifies them as newbies to the area.
At least they know the "s" is silent...
(I think we should get back to the topic at hand: what to do with the Confederate monument. I vote for moving it to Cave Hill, and would also note that accents and pronunciation have nothing whatsoever to do with one's views on this and related topics).
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