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The states were slowly abolishing slavery one by one..
Northern states were abolishing slavery. When it came to secession, there were people openly admitting that slavery was the major reason they wanted to secede. It was elites and slave owners who were saying these things. It can be found in the Articles of Secession. As someone mentioned earlier on this thread, a Confederate general said that slavery was the major reason for secession.
When I think of southern heritage I think of those old plantation homes.
Slaves scrubbing the floors, cooking, working in the fields, etc. While the ruling class is out in the veranda discussing weighty topics (like horse racing) drinking mint juleps wearing the latest fashions of dress.
The USA is a relatively young country which had in it's history a civil war. The Nazi movement and it's flag didn't represent a completely divided country even though it may have united one.
There are many people who can trace their heritage to those that fought in the civil war as part of the Confederate Army. Should those people disregard the service of their forebearers just because one group or groups of people have decided that their perspective of the flag is the only one that matters?
The OP's question begins with an accusation, not a question.
In our nation's history, soldiers have in some instances committed horrific war crimes. Should we disavow the Nation's flag because of those actions?
There is no greater disrespect toward a part of society than blaming one idea or even several on everyone who fought for their country.
When it comes to the Nazi flag, most German soldiers did not fight for what Nazism, meant, they fought for their country.
Soldiers in the Confederate Army didn't for the most part fight for slavery. That idea is perpetrated by the most racist people in our own society, those that place a label on the Confederate flag and the people who fought for their country. Disgraceful, yet apply the same standard to them and watch the reaction. You would be called racist, hater and so on.
Who is the racist or the hater, the person who assigns their own values and beliefs upon others with not even an attempt to understand or consider the truth or those that remember the sacrifice of their great relatives who many have given their lives in the defense of their homes and families as they saw it.
How easy it is for some to forget that the very same types of people who now serve in the armed forces and would give their lives to protect this country are the same that lived in that time and did the same.
How many in the North were anti slavery for convenience? Those same types of people are the first to call others racists or worse. There were there then, they are here now.
No they, weren't. The Civil War began in 1861. No state had abolished slavery since New Jersey in 1804, 57 years earlier.
So tell us, is your false claim born of deceit or just plain ignorance?
Exactly. Not to mention even if the states were supposedly slowly abolishing slavery, what makes people think that slaves would have preferred to stay in bondage while the states took their sweet time to get around to freeing them? Seriously, folks are saying "it was happening slowly anyway, they would've gotten around to abolishing slavery after a while" as if it was just some little innocuous situation that was really no big deal. Slavery was an institution of treating human beings like animals, they were owned, they were whipped, families were ripped apart, slave women were raped, they weren't even viewed as human. How in the world can anybody look at the absolute horror that was slavery and still say "meh, it would've ended eventually anyway." Wow.
The Civil War, like all wars, are always fought for some sort of economic gain on both sides. The south wanted to keep slavery, and hated what it saw as unfair taxation(mostly tariffs) by the north on southern agriculture, in which it spent in the northern states. And the Northern industrialists didn't care about slavery, because it was cheaper and better to hire poor Irish immigrants, than to try to use extremely low-skill slave labor in major cities(where do you house slaves in New York City?). But the industry of the north was being heavily subsidized by the agriculture of the south, and wasn't about to let the south leave the union.
Then you have a few other groups that were involved. Like abolitionists, who wanted to stop slavery at any cost. You had the "federalist"/"nationalist"/"Hamiltonian" types, who saw an opportunity to end the question of whether secession was legal, and push to create a much stronger central government.
My point of view is that, war or no war, slavery would have ended. Just like it did in basically every other country which had slavery at one time. So, what was really won or lost in the Civil War?
The truth is, what won was the federal government, because it crushed the idea of secession and states' rights. We went into the Civil War a union of states. We came out of the Civil War a single nation. And ultimately, I actually think the Civil War was going to happen sooner or later, slavery or not. The reason why is that, the constitution simply left too vague the powers of the federal government vs the powers of the states. And especially, there was no real explanation if there was a right of secession.
Really, in 1860, many people accepted that the states did have a right to secede, or at least there was nothing prohibiting it.
This was James Buchanan's address to Congress in 1860.
"In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy, it must be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere voluntary association of States, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties. If this be so, the Confederacy is a rope of sand, to be penetrated and dissolved by the first adverse wave of public opinion in any of the States."
I have respect for the southerners that fought in the war. And to a large degree, I think we(and humanity in general) would have been better off if the south had won the war. I think it would have helped to slow or stop the ever-expanding federal government. Which is really just the result of basically the tyranny of democracy, or as Lord Acton calls it "the absolutism of the sovereign will" in his letter to Robert E. Lee.
"Without presuming to decide the purely legal question, on which it seems evident to me from Madison's and Hamilton's papers that the Fathers of the Constitution were not agreed, I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo."
As for people who actually fly either the Nazi or Confederate flags, I have mixed feelings about them. I mean, some of them are actually good people. Southerners for instance tend to have the federal government, and so they see the Confederate flag as a representation of people standing up against oppressive government, and the rights of individuals and the states. Of course, many of them are just racists. And with the Nazi flag, most of the people who fly the flag, are really white-nationalists. Who believe that white people and non-white people(or even Christians and non-Christians) cannot co-exist peacefully in the same territory. And believe that, national socialism can only be accomplished through white nationalism. And they don't necessarily intend to be hateful, but rather they see their beliefs are simply practical. But again, most of those people are just hateful bigots who instantly think they are better than everyone else just because they are white.
Last edited by Redshadowz; 04-18-2013 at 08:02 PM..
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