Posted on 04/02/2011 6:49:56 AM PDT by jrushing
However, two ideological factors caused most Southern whites, including those who were not slave-owners, to defend slavery. First, Americans are wondrous optimists, looking to the upper class and expecting to join it someday. In 1860, many subsistence farmers aspired to become large slave-owners. So poor white Southerners supported slavery then, just as many low-income people support the extension of George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy now.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I came across this dull & unremarkable article about the Civil War. This media template comment jumped out at me.
So poor white Southerners supported slavery then, just as many low-income people support the extension of George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy now.
They really are pathetic.
The tax cuts were for all income levels in that the entire federal income tax rates were lowered. Why do "journalists" continue to lie that the 2003 tax cuts were only for the rich?
They just refuse to let it go. I wouldn't have thought to comment about tax cuts in an article about the Civil War.
Maybe he should write about the Myths of the Washington Post.
I don’t want to start anything here but the South was right.
The author is certainly right about the proximate cause of the Civil War, it was about slavery. Reading the words of those states that seceded make that point clear. But, the paragraph above reveals a complete lack of understanding about the eventual fate of the hideous practice. Slavery was gone in the Western Hemisphere and in European societies by the end of the 19th Century. It endures today in Africa and Muslim societies
Economics plays a large role in that fact. Industrialization is a major reason why. As manufacturing and mechanized agriculture began to gain sway, the economic foundation for slavery waned. While the cotton gin was probably an example that demonstrated the opposite effect, over time advances in industrial society would have produced cheaper methods of producing cotton than was possible with slave labor. Slaves were very expensive, and became much more so in the waning years. The Royal Navy had put a halt to the Atlantic Slave trade, so new slaves were only available through natural increase. That wasn't enough and prices as shown in bills of sale, estate papers, and wills reflect the supply and demand problem. With so much wealth tied up in slave labor, the South was not about to freely relinquish their fortunes. Look at what happened in Wisconsin when the Governor tried to get state employees to pay for part of their health. People get very worked up when their family fortune comes under threat.
No, they are truly evil to their core. The are happily destroying our Republic. All that conservatives cherish, the left lives to destroy.
If there isn't a serious effort soon to slash government at all levels then we will likely face a Mad Max future or a slow decay into a socialist hell.
Never forget the left is pure evil out to purposely destroy our way of life.
What is pathetic is a lot of Southern hating anti-Free Republic jerks agree with this.
And the Revolutionary war of 1776 was about tea.
-- A Linclon, destroyer of republics.
This article and this author are fairly thick-headed and not historical at all. I descend from mostly non-slaveholding southerners, with a few who were. To try and paint nonslaveholders as ignorant white trash aspiring to the gentry might work for the fools in northern Virginia, but it doesn’t work in North Carolina or anywhere in the inland Piedmont and upland south.
Here, there were numerous groups of religious dissenters who settled, that did not believe in slavery. Quakers, Moravians, Mennonites, they just did not do it, or largely did not in the case of Moravians, who frowned upon the practice and welcomed blacks into their churches, but did not forbid the practice outright.
Those who fought, fought for their State, capitalized. State. It weighed in on a level of equal importance with country in that era. Many believed they were re-fighting the Revolution, and looking at the principles at stake that get completely glossed past in all the finger-pointing over slavery, they were right. You can thank the victors of the Civil War for the Federal leviathan of today.
These simplistic so-called “analyses” are thick on the ground and almost uniformly uninformed. It’s not as if the migratory patterns and the history aren’t available for all who can crack a book or even click a fr***ing button on a computer keyboard.
Propaganda. That’s all it is.
All of my ancestors were Southerners. Some were slave holders, some not. Some of their kinfolk moved to Indiana and Illinois in part because of their religious objections to slavery. None of my ancestors made this move although some had similar religious objections.
They all supported the Confederacy in one form or another with most of the adult males serving in uniform. They believed in the cause as their contemporary writings make clear. The cause in which they believed was the preservation of the institution of slavery. Their words are quite unambiguous. Archives are full of letters with similar sentiments and the debates and proclamations of the various state legislatures do not mince words. These documents are both in archives and in print, with much available in electronic form.
You can deny it all you want, but the opinions of Southerners circa 1860 carry more weight than current day ideas of folks who want to paper over an obvious historical fact IMO.
Please post them, I would like to see them.
What liberals and blacks have forgotten is that the Democratic Party was the party of slavery...and still is. The Democratic Party counted on blacks to be stupid and they have been.
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| Secession Timeline various sources |
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| [Although very late in the war Lee wanted freedom offered to any of the slaves who would agree to fight for the Confederacy, practically no one was stupid enough to fall for that. In any case, Lee was definitely not fighting to end slavery, instead writing that black folks are better off in bondage than they were free in Africa, and regardless, slavery will be around until Providence decides, and who are we to second guess that? And the only reason the masters beat their slaves is because of the abolitionists.] Robert E. Lee letter -- "...There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master..." |
December 27, 1856 |
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| Platform of the Alabama Democracy -- the first Dixiecrats wanted to be able to expand slavery into the territories. It was precisely the issue of slavery that drove secession -- and talk about "sovereignty" pertained to restrictions on slavery's expansion into the territories. | January 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln nominated by Republican Party | May 18, 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln elected | November 6, 1860 |
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| Robert Toombs, Speech to the Georgia Legislature -- "...In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet this growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, have received this increasing tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. All just reasoning, all past history, condemn the fallacy. The North understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with fire, they will make it sting itself to death." | November 13, 1860 |
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| Alexander H. Stephens -- "...The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution." | November 14, 1860 |
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| South Carolina | December 20, 1860 |
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| Mississippi | January 9, 1861 |
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| Florida | January 10, 1861 |
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| Alabama | January 11, 1861 |
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| Georgia | January 19, 1861 |
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| Louisiana | January 26, 1861 |
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| Texas | February 23, 1861 |
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| Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President of the United States |
March 4, 1861 |
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| Arizona territory | March 16, 1861 |
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| CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone speech -- "...last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact." | March 21, 1861 |
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| Virginia | adopted April 17,1861 ratified by voters May 23, 1861 |
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| Arkansas | May 6, 1861 |
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| North Carolina | May 20, 1861 |
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| Tennessee | adopted May 6, 1861 ratified June 8, 1861 |
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| West Virginia declares for the Union | June 19, 1861 |
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| Missouri | October 31, 1861 |
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| "Convention of the People of Kentucky" | November 20, 1861 |
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I posted this to show how the drive-by-media keeps to the template no matter what the topic is.
As for as the South & slavery is concerned, there is a great book by Freeper LS who answered the questions in my mind.
In a sense it was about tea-and taxes on it and everything else that let to being’’ Taxed Enough Already.’’
Or maybe they understand economics better than you do.
Or maybe they are not consumed with envy the way you are.
Or maybe they don't feel entitled so seize other peoples' property the way you do.
What a jackass.
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