Well, let’s not get wrapped up in a blanket of Yankee self-righteousness. We should remember that slavery existed in the North as well as in the South, and that there was still a small number of slaves in New Jersey as late as 1860.
You have to wonder why Yankees hold the South in such comtempt, yet continue to flood down here like locusts, bringing their destructive liberal ways with them and stripping the stores and delis of pastrami.
Oh, well. Southerners will do what we always do when confronted with Yankees who think they know it all. We’ll laugh at you and make fun of you behind your backs.
I've often wonder about that! They come here because they like it better, the people are so nice... then, the first thing they do is they try to tell us how we should do things, how they did it up North. Don't they realize they are trying to turn the South into exactly the same quagmire they are escaping?
Yep...this thread should be titled neo-yankee revisionism, on full display.
Nice post!
I'd suspect it's your fear of "Yankee self-righteousness" which drives a lot of responses here, as opposed to some more etherial love of factually correct history... ;-)
If we are interested in real history, then it might help to remember that slavery was abolished very slowly in the north and west (i.e., Illinois), and had it continued that course, might eventually have been abolished in some border states, such as Delaware and Maryland.
But (and it's a huge "but"), in the Deep South, slavery was a way of life so deeply built into the prosperous economy and Southern culture that abolition could not even be discussed with those people.
That's why the mere election of a "Black Republican" such as Abraham Lincoln, was cause enough to not only declare their secession, but also to start and formally declare war on the United States.
So, these facts have nothing to do with "Yankee self-righteousness", they are simply the truth of the matter.
Want to know a secret? Those of us who live in states which didn't vote for Obama do the same thing towards all y'all who live in states that did.
Funny, but I'm pretty sure that delis and pastrami aren't native Southern flora or fauna.
If they were flocking for grits and hamhocks you might have just grounds for complaint, but it looks to me like they're just reclaiming and enjoying their own contribution.
Oh, well. Southerners will do what we always do when confronted with Yankees who think they know it all. We’ll laugh at you and make fun of you behind your backs.
And they laugh at you behind your backs, so I guess everybody's even.
I do have to wonder if the Yankees aren't a scapegoat. Maybe upcountry and downcountry would get on each other's nerves a lot more if there weren't convenient newcomers to blame.
All true, but the issue is not moral righteousness, the issue is over who is to blame for the civil war. It is a myth that Lincoln wanted to end slavery in existing slave states. The worst that his government did was limit the spread of slavery via the Missouri compromise and his government's failure to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act (why do state's rights suddenly go out the window there)?
The proximate (though not necessarily ultimate or historical cause) for secession was not Lincoln imposing his will on slave states, but the slave state's desire to impose their will and laws on the rest of the nation, including free states.
/.02 ;-)