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I am no Southern apologist, but let's get some things straight.
1) Slavery was wrong, and the government officials in the south proclaimed the defense of slavery as their cause. Those people needed to be defeated. I will say that my ancestors who fought for the south were not slave owners, but fought for their independence from what they saw at the time as a tyrranical government. The times were much different then, and a centralized federal government was seen as what we fought against years before in the American Revolution. They did not want that intrusion into their lives, no matter the reason.
2) While Lincoln's rhetoric declared that "the momentus occasion of Civil War" was in the hands of the South, and not his own, it should also be noted that at the time, the states held more power than the federal government, meaning that the states had good reason to believe that even federal property within their borders was more subject to their own governments than the capitols. A hard concept to comprehend now.
3) Lincoln broke his own promise with a resupply attempt from the ship "The Star of the West". Considered a huge breach of trust by South Carolinians, and arguably a provocative move by Lincoln to cause a war.
4) The Emancipation Proclamation was not passed until late 1862, to come into effect in 1863, freeing slaves in only those territories involved in active rebellion against the federal government. The reason for the EP being a fear by Lincoln and the Federals that since they were losing the battlefield war, they needed a moral reason to keep European powers out of the war. He used the stalemate of Sharpsburg as enough of a Union victory to hide the shame of the proclamation as a loser's last gasp.
The end of slavery is a great outcome of the war. However, it would be interesting to see what the effects of a peaceful solution to slavery would have been on the exponential expansion of growth and power of the federal government since the war.
Also interesting to me are the implications of Lincoln's death. While his own reconstruction/rebuilding beliefs in the south were fairly moderate, after his assassination, things got out of control. I think that there are very clear consequences to his murder still apparent in the south today. Years and years of federal occupation, federal appointments to governerships, exploitation and disenfranchisment, border tarriffs and carpetbagging, have led to the disparaging demographic numbers still seen in the south today. My own state was not allowed back in the "Union" until 1870, with troops not being withdrawn until 1877. In perspective, that's not so long ago.
It is a positive thing that The United States remained a single nation, but it is foolish to be blinded by partisan history, and to not understand what happened. It is not nearly as "black and white" as some would make it.
Are you saying that a civil war was cheaper than paying for property the federal government wanted to confiscate? Are you saying that 625,000 dead was a better "deal"? Slavery was a horrid institution, and it was past time for it to end. However, due to it's high cost, and the increasing availability of cheap immigrant labor, slavery was becoming both less cost effective and less necessary. Slavery did not exist because slaves were cheap, they never were. Slavery thrived because there was no other labor force available. By the 1860s, that was changing, and the institution of slavery was dying on it's own.
As bad as slavery was, and as disgusting as the concept of human beings as property is, it was the law at the time. The government had no more right to take slave owners property at that time than they do to say arbitrarily confiscate everyone's vehicle today. They could have simply come up with a program to lawfully purchase slaves and release them. While expensive, it would have been far less costly both in lives and cash than a civil war. Unfortunately, Lincoln was to arrogant and too lacking in leadership qualities to find a non-violent end to the institution.
The interesting thing about EP is that it was viable strictly because he considered slaves to be property. The argument that justified EP was that the federal government had the power to confiscate property from the "rebels". It never ended (or even addressed) the slavery issue in the balance of the union.
The Nuremberg Laws were the law of the land too.
Oh..but those targeted Jews, not blacks.
Nevermind...sorry for mentioning that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SHABAZZ310
I hear this lie told over and over.
First off, no one thinks that only whites owned slaves. If this is the case please point me in the direction of a credible history book that makes such a claim.
Second, the majority of blacks who owned other blacks did so to free their families. When ex-slaves bought their wives & children out of slavery how do you think it was recorded? There were blacks who owned slaves as workers but saying this was the majority is disingenuous…
What they're trying to say (without coming right out and saying it) is that slavery was ok because a few blacks participated in it too. So that somehow mitigates white involvement and domination of the institution. Their hands are thus clean. Examples below...vvvv
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkatt
Why do people think that only white people owned slaves. In the 1860 Census, there were over 1600 black slaveowners throughout the south, not counting new orleans where there were over 3000 black slave owners.
....example one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RebelYell14
Hell one of the richest men in South Carolina was a BLACK slave owner.
One could say that the CW was started by fanatics on both sides but being a fanatic for freedom is a whole lot different from being a fanatic for slavery. You think?
If we let the south break off of the country because they lost an election.....then democracy failed. California might have broken off, parts of the south might have broken off the CSA.... We could look like Europe with 30+ countries and might not have been one solitary force to help win WWII.
Furthermore, South Carolina broke off to protect slavery - an abomination to mankind.
One of the best articles I`ve ever read regarding the causes of the Civil War.Gordon Rhea is a top notch author of several Civil War books who had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy. Why Non-Slaveholding Southerners Fought
Maybe you should go re-read them. They ALSO targeted Gypsies AND all other "NON ARYANS".
Quote:
Nevermind...sorry for mentioning that.
No you aren't sorry for mentioning that, if you were, you would have gon back and either edited or deleted your post. You made the post specifically to inflame.
Quote:
What they're trying to say (without coming right out and saying it) is that slavery was ok because a few blacks participated in it too. So that somehow mitigates white involvement and domination of the institution. Their hands are thus clean. Examples below...vvvv
....example one.
....example two.
No one was trying to say Slavery was OK. I simply pointed out, the very first slave owner in America, was a black man.
Nothing mitigates anything here, slavery was an pimple on the behind of a great country, and I truly wish it wasn't a part of American history. It was however, AND, it is in the past.
I also mentioned the fact that there were black slave owners, because even today, children in school are being taught that only whites owned slaves. Sorry if your irritated by the truth. BTW, how far back do you know about YOUR ancestry, your ancestry may include a few slave owners also. MINE on the other hand doesn't.
Maybe you should go re-read them. They ALSO targeted Gypsies AND all other "NON ARYANS".
No you aren't sorry for mentioning that, if you were, you would have gon back and either edited or deleted your post. You made the post specifically to inflame.
No one was trying to say Slavery was OK. I simply pointed out, the very first slave owner in America, was a black man.
Nothing mitigates anything here, slavery was an pimple on the behind of a great country, and I truly wish it wasn't a part of American history. It was however, AND, it is in the past.
I also mentioned the fact that there were black slave owners, because even today, children in school are being taught that only whites owned slaves. Sorry if your irritated by the truth. BTW, how far back do you know about YOUR ancestry, your ancestry may include a few slave owners also. MINE on the other hand doesn't.
Actually, I have been taught about the non-traditional slave owners. I've also been taught about people in Africa turning in their own fellow men to slavery.
Lincoln's aggressive war against the Confederates caused 625,000 deaths. After 2 years of battle, he issued the Emancipatin Proclamation correcting the terrible wrong of slavery. Is aggressive action causing so many deaths negated by the EP?
If yes, compare freeing the Iraqis from slavery of Saddam and Bush causing 3500 deaths....
There is a major difference between chattel slavery in the U.S. and living as a citizen under an oppressive government Saddam's Iraq.
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Lincoln caused 625K Deaths
