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Originally Posted by SeattleUte
Not you. I agree with everything you say. However, as some have noted here, they were taught in school pre-college that slavery was just one issue and not neccesarily the overarching issue. I have a friend who's from Mississippi who strongly believes the same thing. This is of course the kind of revisionist nonsense often seen in children's history books, trying to make evildoers appear less malevolent for political reasons. For example, what Japanese children have been taught about the causes of WWII.
As for your point about morality vs. economics, it strikes me that this is roughly analogous to the present abortion debate. I've often thought that it's easier for a male to be righteous about abortion since he doesn't have to carry the child inside him, risk life and limb to bear it, necessarily rear it (easier to just pay support than raise a child for sure, etc.). So your point is that the southern gentry faced economic ruin and thus it was harder for them to choose the right. I suppose you may be right about that but they still were bad people. This doesn't strike me as a very resonant point. The British had already abolished slavery on moral grounds, and I think even the Brazilians had by then.
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One of the things I really enjoyed about Shelby Foote's trilogy on the Civil War, which I recently read, was how clear it became to the rank and file during the war what the war was about and what the consequences of a Northern loss would be. THrough the use of quotations from journals and letters he makes this point very well.
I guess my point on the economic vs morality issue is not quite so bold as to say the Sotuh was evil, although I certainyl don't think they were necessarily evil just as I will concede that some of them certainly were evil. Instead, I think it is important to try to view them as they were, instead of as we are. We study history to avoid repeating it, as they say, and I think it is a mistake to look at their struggle and assume that we have learned the lesson taught becasue we have recognized and granted civil rights to all. By doing so, we lose other key and maybe even more important lessons, such as making sure that we are not blinded by economic expediecny to our own abuses of privilege and power. I think these lessons are more easily and readily applied from the civil war to our own lives if we try to see the patricipants as they were, and as they may have seen themselves.
Not a big point really, but I think it is a valid one.