I really have to address your opinion Re: we could have waited out slavery until it was no longer economically viable. In other words we should just have looked a slave in the face and said, “Don’t worry in the next 25-50 years this will all go away.” Nice thought. I get that it was horrific that over 600,000 for this cause, but if ever …
I really have to address your opinion Re: we could have waited out slavery until it was no longer economically viable. In other words we should just have looked a slave in the face and said, “Don’t worry in the next 25-50 years this will all go away.” Nice thought. I get that it was horrific that over 600,000 for this cause, but if ever there was cause, in my opinion, ending slavery was A CAUSE!
Also, you didn’t need to be slaveholder to fight for the Confederacy. They were racists who did not “cotton” to the idea these slaves were getting “uppity ideas”about being free, forget equal. It has only been as recently as in our lifetimes that the South has for the vast majority of its citizenry turned from being a racist culture. The entire Civil Rights movement wouldn’t have been necessary had racism ended along with slavery when the Civil War ended. We have come a long way, but it is really our children’s generation, born in the 70’s and 80’s and since, that can claim to be the first truly non-racist generation. That might be a bit of a broad brush, but essentially the case.
OK I have to address yours. Your second paragraph shows a lack of understanding in what this was all about. It wasn't racism. Even among northern abolitionists, and Lincoln himself, they did not see "the Negroes" as equal to whites. This wasn't viewed through the racist lens as we define it today. It was a commonly held opinion of the entire country that they were perceived as less capable than the rest of the population. The abolitionists just felt they did not deserve to be held in bondage. So the whole country was racist.
Now as to changing history, Lincoln's assassination guaranteed that the South's trajectory after the war was going to be different. Johnson actually started on a more magnanimous course than was expected. And the radical Republicans were astonished, that after being gifted Johnson after Lincoln's death, that he wouldn't come down hard on the Southerners. They fixed that, almost impeaching him and created the reconstruction we all know about that birthed the KKK, and our first example of partisan political violence the democrats have uniquely used even today. Slowly democrats worked to expunge the newly freed slaves from the everyday flow of life. National democrats used these efforts to institutionalize this fact throughout society, birthing the likes of Margaret Sanger and Woodrow Wilson. The Bacon Davis Act was used to keep them out of skilled positions - a law still on the books.
We look with amazement at how the current government seems to want to rule over us, as opposed to govern the country. But authoritarian impulses run deep on the left, as well as a crybaby attitude when they lose politically. It's been around for almost 200 years. They are tough bunch of tyrants to beat.
Interracial slavery was not commonplace until a technological leap in transportation technology in the 16th Century made it possible to transport slaves purchased from Africans to the Americas. Also slave ships used sustainable wind energy.
You are making the classic mistake of viewing history through the moral lens of today. Prior to the British abolishing slavery in the 1820's, slavery was very common, ESPECIALLY in Africa and the rest of the Muslim world. Indeed, the vast majority of slaves shipped to North America were captured and sold to Europeans by coastal black slavers who went to the interior where whites did not dare go to capture slaves who they sold to Europeans and Arabs.
Again, it is a mistake to apply modern moral thinking to people two and three hundred years ago. When the African slave trade started it was common among the uneducated whites to believe that blacks were lower on the evolutionary ladder and incapable of fitting into a civilized society. As dead wrong as that belief was, it was still a dominant belief. Before you condemn them, walk a mile in their shoes as the saying goes.
The same applied to Native Americans, who lived a Stone Age existence when Europeans first came to the New World. They certainly did not deserve some of the treatment that came their way, especially the atrocity that was the Trail of Tears, but they have been almost granted sainthood by 21st century activists. I have a smattering of Cherokee blood, and even they and the Seneca, who were viewed as members of the Five Civilized Tribes, were bloody barbarians. The two nations would send young warriors to freaking RUN up and down the Warrior's Path from the southern mountains up into what is now New York state to make war, slaughtering each other, and TAKING YOUNG GIRLS AND BOYS TO BE SLAVES! The Plains tribes were far worse, for their women specialized in torturing captives taken by their warriors.
I really have to address your opinion Re: we could have waited out slavery until it was no longer economically viable. In other words we should just have looked a slave in the face and said, “Don’t worry in the next 25-50 years this will all go away.” Nice thought. I get that it was horrific that over 600,000 for this cause, but if ever there was cause, in my opinion, ending slavery was A CAUSE!
Also, you didn’t need to be slaveholder to fight for the Confederacy. They were racists who did not “cotton” to the idea these slaves were getting “uppity ideas”about being free, forget equal. It has only been as recently as in our lifetimes that the South has for the vast majority of its citizenry turned from being a racist culture. The entire Civil Rights movement wouldn’t have been necessary had racism ended along with slavery when the Civil War ended. We have come a long way, but it is really our children’s generation, born in the 70’s and 80’s and since, that can claim to be the first truly non-racist generation. That might be a bit of a broad brush, but essentially the case.
OK I have to address yours. Your second paragraph shows a lack of understanding in what this was all about. It wasn't racism. Even among northern abolitionists, and Lincoln himself, they did not see "the Negroes" as equal to whites. This wasn't viewed through the racist lens as we define it today. It was a commonly held opinion of the entire country that they were perceived as less capable than the rest of the population. The abolitionists just felt they did not deserve to be held in bondage. So the whole country was racist.
Now as to changing history, Lincoln's assassination guaranteed that the South's trajectory after the war was going to be different. Johnson actually started on a more magnanimous course than was expected. And the radical Republicans were astonished, that after being gifted Johnson after Lincoln's death, that he wouldn't come down hard on the Southerners. They fixed that, almost impeaching him and created the reconstruction we all know about that birthed the KKK, and our first example of partisan political violence the democrats have uniquely used even today. Slowly democrats worked to expunge the newly freed slaves from the everyday flow of life. National democrats used these efforts to institutionalize this fact throughout society, birthing the likes of Margaret Sanger and Woodrow Wilson. The Bacon Davis Act was used to keep them out of skilled positions - a law still on the books.
We look with amazement at how the current government seems to want to rule over us, as opposed to govern the country. But authoritarian impulses run deep on the left, as well as a crybaby attitude when they lose politically. It's been around for almost 200 years. They are tough bunch of tyrants to beat.
Interracial slavery was not commonplace until a technological leap in transportation technology in the 16th Century made it possible to transport slaves purchased from Africans to the Americas. Also slave ships used sustainable wind energy.
Well said.
You are making the classic mistake of viewing history through the moral lens of today. Prior to the British abolishing slavery in the 1820's, slavery was very common, ESPECIALLY in Africa and the rest of the Muslim world. Indeed, the vast majority of slaves shipped to North America were captured and sold to Europeans by coastal black slavers who went to the interior where whites did not dare go to capture slaves who they sold to Europeans and Arabs.
Again, it is a mistake to apply modern moral thinking to people two and three hundred years ago. When the African slave trade started it was common among the uneducated whites to believe that blacks were lower on the evolutionary ladder and incapable of fitting into a civilized society. As dead wrong as that belief was, it was still a dominant belief. Before you condemn them, walk a mile in their shoes as the saying goes.
The same applied to Native Americans, who lived a Stone Age existence when Europeans first came to the New World. They certainly did not deserve some of the treatment that came their way, especially the atrocity that was the Trail of Tears, but they have been almost granted sainthood by 21st century activists. I have a smattering of Cherokee blood, and even they and the Seneca, who were viewed as members of the Five Civilized Tribes, were bloody barbarians. The two nations would send young warriors to freaking RUN up and down the Warrior's Path from the southern mountains up into what is now New York state to make war, slaughtering each other, and TAKING YOUNG GIRLS AND BOYS TO BE SLAVES! The Plains tribes were far worse, for their women specialized in torturing captives taken by their warriors.
Trying to moralize history is a fool's errand.