[Newsbot]

Title: 'Secession Ball' in commemorates US Civil War, stirs protest by civil rights group
Category: History
Posted By: Hyack
Date: 2010-12-20 18:52:29

[GreenTiger]

This is something like the Confederate flag itself. It means different things to different people.

Unfortunatly reason will fly out the window very fast on this because of the emotions involved.

[KorbenDeck]

I always find it funny that people think the civil war was fought over slavery. Gives me a laugh

[GreenTiger]

KorbenDeck KorbenDeck:

I always find it funny that people think the civil war was fought over slavery. Gives me a laugh

It just shows how shallow their knowledge of the Civil War is.

[xerxes]

GreenTiger GreenTiger:

KorbenDeck KorbenDeck:

I always find it funny that people think the civil war was fought over slavery. Gives me a laugh

It just shows how shallow their knowledge of the Civil War is.

Oh really? Then what was the Civil War fought over then? Grits? Nascar?

$1:

South Carolina Secession Declaration

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common government. Observing the forms of the constitution, a sectional party has found within that article establishing the executive department the means of subverting the constitution itself. 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 subversion 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 peace and safety.

On the 4th of March next this party will take possession of the government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory; that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

Yeah. It totally wasn't about slavery.

[leon245]

[ShepherdsDog]

You make it sound like it was a great crusade to end slavery. Abolishing slavery was a secondary or even tertiary issue for the actual federal government. When Lincoln came to power in 1860 he only stated that he thought slavery was morally wrong and didn't want it spreading into any of the new American states and territories. Very little mention was made of those states where it was an established practise.

The overwhelming bulk of Union soldiers did not go to war to free blacks, they saw the real crime and rebellion as being secession from the Union. Most, like their southern counterparts, didn't give a rat's ass about the welfare of the blacks. Converesly the Confederates didn't go to war to make sure blacks remained in chains as property. Why was John Brown(captured in an operation commanded by Robert E. Lee), a militant abolitionist, condemned for treason, mere months before the Civil War? Why was Lee, a slave owner himself, offered command of the Union armies? US Grant didn't free his slaves, along with the other Northern slave owners until the 13th Amendment became law, on Dec. 18, 1865...two years after the Emancipation Proclimation? Grant also said,

$1:

"If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission, and offer my sword to the other side."
--- Ulysses S. Grant

And why did Lincoln say in his 'famous' emancipation proclimation

$1:

,"I will say, then, that I am not, nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races ... I am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

and

$1:

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
--- Abraham Lincoln, 3/14/1861 First Inaugural Speech

With the growth of factories, even the South saw the writing on the wall, slavery would eventually die out. Only about a 1/4 of the wealthiest farmers owned slaves in the southern states but until such a time as they could industrialize they saw slavery as a necessary evil.

Had the Civil War been about slavery, the Republicans would have issued an emancipation proclimation before hostilities even broke out, rather than waiting until January 1863. As it was the Union itself had slave states. Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and West Virginia were all Union States that allowed slavery. These 800 000 slaves were not freed by the proclimation(Sort of hypocritical if this war was all about slavery). They had to wait until local state and federal legislation was enacted(13th Amendment of December 1865). Only those slaves in the Confederacy were 'freed', by this act, in the hope that they would rise up and weaken the Confederate government and military.

No, it wasn't about slavery. Ending slavery played a part for some, but it wasn't the reason tens of thousands of Americans died in a bloody conflict.

[2Cdo]

KorbenDeck KorbenDeck:

I always find it funny that people think the civil war was fought over slavery. Gives me a laugh

See post two down from yours.

Revisionist morons.

[xerxes]

It may not have initially been about ending slavery for the North, but the main justification for the Confederate States seceeding was about slavery.

[Heavy_Metal]

wish the hicks would give it a rest with the confederate thing, they lost, get over it. all this the south will rise again bs should be treated as treason and smashed with overwhelming power.

im in Alberta and there is nothing i hate more than seeing some f*cking red neck with a huge truck that has the confederate flag on his front license plate

[Scape]

War, war never changes. It was never over slaves it was about money.

I think the slaves were a part of one of the 5 major reasons of the war (that being the economy) so no it wasn't fought over that.

State rights over fed rights was more predominate. Voting in Abe was a huge factor as well but I am amazed at how much the abolition movement is almost entirely ignored and it was one of the most important factors. Imagine a war today fought over weed!

[andyt]

Scape Scape:

War, war never changes. It was never over slaves it was about money.

You mean WWII wasn't fought to preserve freedom and rescue the Jews?

[Thanos]

Stopping the spread of slavery in the new states and territories was probably more of an aggravating factor to the Southerners than the unlikely (in 1861 anyway) possibility that Congress would try to abolish slavery outright in Dixie. Not allowing any expansion of slavery elsewhere in the planned continental expanse probably left them with a collective sense of being cornered, and created an atmosphere among them that the existing slavery had to be defended even though the writing for it was clearly on the wall for all (even Southerners) to see.

The more interesting thing is the sense of denial among modern Southerners that their illusory cause was, and still is, just. I sense a greater amount of reality and a desire to break from a horrible past from modern Germans than I can from American Southerners. By the US government not occupying the defeated South for much longer than it actually did, and by not forcing changes in the collective culture, it allowed all this ridiculous racism, self-aggrandizment, and white supremacist paranoia to fester for far too many decades after such sentiments among Southerners could even remotely be justified. In hindsight what should have happened was that the Federals should have militarily occupied the South for at least as long as they did in West Germany in order to thoroughly destroy all traces of Confederate and white supremacist thought and ideology. Not doing so clearly allowed a festering cancer to grow unchecked, as witnessed by the terrorist activities of the Klan going on for decades, Jim Crow, attacks on civil rights proponents, ongoing segregation, and other mental pathologies that still plague the South.

Considering that at any given time the South has controlled the direction of both major American political parties (the Democrats in the past and the Republicans today) no wonder they're still arrogant enough to keep believing that they never really lost the Civil War.

[Scape]

andyt andyt:

Scape Scape:

War, war never changes. It was never over slaves it was about money.

You mean WWII wasn't fought to preserve freedom and rescue the Jews?

The civil war was fought over slaves as much as WWII was fought over the holocaust. They were afterthoughts at best.

[andyt]

It certainly wasn't fought to protect the Jews, since the Allied nations either didn't know about the camps or didn't give a shit.

But Mustang will be all over me, and you too, if you assert it was just another European power play.