12-05-2007, 11:04 PM | #31 | |
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I asked the question because I think your assertions may be somewhat obfuscating. We always think of slavery in terms of civil rights. Then, I think it was more about political power and economics. The civil rights component was secondary or even tertiary until nearer the end of the war. Slavery was the issue the set up the battle. The north was against it, mostly on moral grounds, but was not very interested in dying for it. The South saw they would likely lose their economic viability without slavery and that slavery was going to be lost if they stayed with the North, so they started the war. They couldn't very well say they were fighting to enslave people, so they couched it as states rights, but really those are the rights they had in mind. The North/Lincoln couldn't successfully maintain support for the war (until later, when he played the Emancipation card as a way to muster support relative to his reelection; in fact, the reason he didn't issue the Emancipation proclamation before then was primarily for political reasons, even though he seemed to think all along that the war was about slavery) by saying we are fighting to free slaves, so he couched it as a war on secession. These characterizations were credited with both causing the war and sustaining it, but most people paying attention knew that, at root, it was all about slavery, as an economic issue for the South but maybe not as just a moral issue for the north, but as perhaps an issue of power. Either way, who is it that you think disagrees with your basic premise here?
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12-05-2007, 11:25 PM | #32 | |
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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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12-05-2007, 11:41 PM | #33 | |
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I'm not certain how empirical Seattle's "well they were just evil men, because I Britain and I think Brazil had eliminated it" is proof positive that the gentry involved were inherently evil. Do not infer I mean slavery was ever good, but I'm not wiling to condemn an entire class of people even if they are doing something unhealthy or now considered wrong. Do you consider a prostitute inherently evil even though most here and elsewhere would admit that what they do is unhealthy and dangerous to all involved? I don't.
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12-06-2007, 12:38 AM | #34 | |
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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.
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Sorry for th e tpyos. Last edited by creekster; 12-06-2007 at 12:45 AM. |
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12-06-2007, 01:27 AM | #35 | |
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12-06-2007, 01:43 AM | #36 | |
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Sure slavery was the subtext, and AA's correct, but wasn't the North's initial and overiding motivation to keep the Union a union?
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12-06-2007, 03:21 AM | #37 | |
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This wasn't that long ago. A majority of Americans were a lot more enlightened then than we give them credit for being. All of our great thinkers, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Emerson, Melville, the James brothers, any viable political candidate in the North, virtually all Northern clergy (except Brigham Young?), condemned slavery. Europeans had seen the light. The dawn of the industrial revolution was at hand. Slavery was a primitive, atavistic, barbaric institution, and the North wasn't going to tolerate it going on in America much longer. That is why even when a moderate opponent of slavery was elected, secession still ensued shortly thereafter, becuase Lincoln was from Illinois. The war was about slavery pure and simple. Archea, my saying southern slave owners who financed and foughtin the war were evil is not an empirical matter. It's a value judgment. What more evidence do you need than they owned slaves and were willing to kill to continue doing so. Slaves escaped and they hunted them down and caught them like animals. I choose to call that kind of conduct evil, and I submit I'm on firm footing doing so. I think every form of racism is evil. Creekster says that those type of judgments aren't that helpful when analyzing history, and I understand and respect what he's saying. But I think it may add clarity to make them every now and then. We don't shrink from calling Hitler and Stalin evil. What went on in the South was evil to a lesser degree of amplitude. It's not a common thing to call the Confederates evil because they became our countrymen after the war, but maybe the moral clarity of calling what they did evil would have prevented Jim Crow and a lot of other permutations of racism that continued long after slavery.
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster Last edited by SeattleUte; 12-06-2007 at 03:23 AM. |
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12-06-2007, 02:43 PM | #38 |
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Asking why the North went to war may be a little like today asking why we are in Iraq. SOme would say we are there to prevent terrorism; some would say to steal oil. SOme would say to kill terrorists in their land; still others would say to attack Al Qaeda and those responsible for 9/11, and even a few would say to assert American influence in the region as a pawn of the Jewish overlords. SO which is the true reason? The popular voice is varied now, just as it was then. Many individual soldiers from the North had no or little interest in liberating slaves, just as many guardsmen probably weren't too keen on civil rights in Arkansas. (To be fair and clear, however, many soldiers were motivated to join and fight precisely because of their interest in liberating slaves.) AMong the decision makers, however, those persons who sign the orders that result in putting boot on turnpike, slavery was the issue that fomented the dispute. The North was seeking to maintain the union, but recall, as woot pointed out, the idea of the nation being the UNited States had not yet settled into most minds at the time. Lincoln had a vision of the country as we know the country now, but his vision included a continent free of enslaved humans.
Here is another way to look at it: The south seceded because of slavery, on this I think we can all agree. The North forced their hand by refusing to compromise on slavery and by leaving the South with no alternative but to choose between staying in the union without slaves or trying to leave the union to keep slaves. THe North could have said "keep your slaves, as union is most important to us" but they didn't. THye refused to make that compromise. SO the south secedes and the North fights to force them back. Is it simply a matter of the union or is it slavery? It is impossible to look at the issue and take slavery out of the equation. Absent slavery, there is no war.
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12-06-2007, 02:55 PM | #39 | |
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12-06-2007, 03:18 PM | #40 | |
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All this discussion is mute. The real reason for the Civil War was because it was prophesied by Joseph Smith.
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