It wasn't about slavery, I mean yeah the vice president of the confederacy made a speech saying slavery was the cornerstone of the CSA, and multiple seceding states released documents that explicitly stated they were seceding in large part because of slavery, and all the seceding states were slave owning states, and West Virginia exists because they split from Virginia as they had no slaves and thus no reason to fight to hold them, and the CSA constitution mandated that any new state would be required to be a slave state... but... umm...
Whenever a chud gives me the “it wASnT AbOut SLavErY!” Line I always go ask them to read the seceding states articles of secession. South Carolina is my particular favorite since they started all.
 But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations.... [The northern] States...have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress, or render useless any attempt to execute them.... Thus the constitutional compact has been deliberately broken....
The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
Those [non-slaveholding] States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace...property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the Common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the Common Government, because he has declared that the "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that Slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the subversion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship persons, who, by the Supreme Law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive to its peace and safety.
Not about slavery though… fucking dipshits
Mississippi's is exclusively about slavery as well
Insert the Bobby Hill meme “if those guys could read they’d be really upset.””
You missed that CSA states weren't allowed to end slavery.
So if conservatives meant things when they say words - the civil war was coincidentally about slavery-having states seeking new slavery-having allies to continue doing slavery together, after flipping out when an anti-slavery party took the white house.
But it was totes mcgoats about states' rights. Except the right to end slavery.
No it was about states rights, like the right to, ummm, nevermind.
I mean they're not entirely wrong, fighting slavery was a political tool not a moral imperative as it should have been and Lincoln didn't in fact want to unilaterally shut it down he wanted the nation to figure it out ideally without violence.
Ed: books people, I'm not interpreting anything Lincoln was extremely vocal about it. Listen to Lincoln, he knows Lincoln weirdly enough.
No, they are entirely wrong.
You are right that Lincoln didn't want a war and only went to war to preserve the union. The North had the votes to end slavery without war and that is how they wanted to end it.
Which is why the southern states seceded and started the war in order to preserve their right to own slaves.
This ain't difficult, people. Photocopies of the documents from that time are easily accessible and written in modern English.
You don't need to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.
It was a moral imperative for much of the North. Lincoln only barely scraped out the Republican nomination. His main opponent was William Seward who was a "radical" abolitionist. Had Seward won the nomination, there may have been some fracturing of the newly formed Republican party. So while there was indeed a portion of the population who felt the complete abolition of slavery was too far, a huge chunk agreed with Seward. In particular, his own wife, Francis Seward. She abhorred slavery and I urge everyone to read her writings upon the subject.
It feels disingenuous to remove morality from the equation. Morality clearly played a role which is why thinkers like Frederick Douglass are still remembered to this day. Clearly there were other forces at play- political and economic which shaped how this played out, but morality was certainly involved.
Gonna get a little preachy here - skip this part if you don't wanna hear that.
All of American history from the Revolutionary war to today can be summed up with people trying to reconcile the conflict of individual freedom and equality. Those two cannot coexist, and a boundary must be placed on one in order to allow the other ideal to flourish.
The civil war is a great example, individual freedom allows one to own another person if that is their desire. Equality says that your individual freedom cannot impede another person's. This means slavery cannot exist in such a value system and equality was valued above individual freedom.
The current abortion debate has the same bedrock conflict. Does an individual's personal freedom allow them the right to stop being pregnant if they wish? Well equality says the unborn child should be considered, as the choice to terminate violates their individual freedom to exist.
Let me be clear - in this post I am not advocating for either side in the abortion debate. I am merely trying to show that most of American history has been defined by trying to draw the line between the two founding principles of the nation.
It depends on the answer to this question:
Did the South start the Civil War by seceding, or did the North start the Civil War by not letting them?
If the South started it by seceding, it was absolutely, unquestionably over slavery. A simple look at the various articles of secession makes that abundantly clear.
If the North started it by not letting them secede, then the Civil War was about preserving the Union, which the South was trying to leave because of slavery. The North wasn't fighting to end slavery. The north in general may or may not have wanted that, but that wasn't why they went to war.
So, this annoys me to no end, because the first dude is technically right, Lincoln came in to office with no intention to outlaw slavery, although he did want to keep it confined to the states it was already legal in. And what he’s actually wrong about is that Lincoln made it about slavery to get the support of the northerners - he actually made sure that it northerners believed it was about “keeping the union together.” Remember the union still had the slave states of Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri. He wanted to keep these states in the union.
Lincoln (through Seward) stressed the anti-slavery stuff to Europeans, many of whom wanted to intervene on the side of the confederacy because that was where they got their cotton. The industrial north also was a threat to industrial Europe, but the agrarian south was a source of raw materials. But by stressing the anti-slavery stuff in Europe (and then of course the emancipation proclamation which didn’t actually outlaw slavery in the border states) he ensured Europe could not intervene on behalf of the confederacy since it would be so unpopular. So, in the states it was about the union, abroad it was about slavery.
But anyway, he’s right on a technicality that, for Lincoln, it was not really about slavery. But this does not mean the war itself was not about slavery. His conclusion rests on the assumption that in a war, two sides must be diametrically opposed to one another, so if Lincoln and the north were not fighting against slavery, therefore the south could not be fighting for slavery.
But as others have pointed out, the south explicitly says they are fighting to preserve the institution of slavery. They are worried about waning political power also - if Lincoln stopped the spread of slavery across the continent as he desired, the growth of free states would mean congress would not be as evenly split between slave and free states, opening up the possibility of legislating an end to slavery.
So the war was about slavery, and would not have occurred without slavery. Often we point to the Battle of Sumter as the beginning of the civil war, but many historians also point out the popular civil war could instead be said to begin in 1859 in Harper’s Ferry, or with Bleeding Kansas and the Pottawotamie Massacre, or maybe the caning of Charles sumner or the murder of Elijah Lovejoy, or any of the political battles that arose when the US began to expand west and the question arose “what about slavery.” All of these events are directly about slavery and it would be difficult to argue otherwise.
And also, just as a last thing “many southern generals didn’t care about slavery.” I have no idea how true that is and it doesn’t matter, because the war was not fought because of southern generals but because of politicians, southern landowners, and an economy resting on the subjugation of Black people, and that’s why they were fighting.
This is a really well thought out and written comment. Thanks for an excellent contribution 👍🏼
Thank you! I deal with these people in my daily life so I’m always primed for an effort post on it
Init. I love that people like this exist.
Thank you!
I try to always emphasize the existential threat to the South that abolishing slavery was. As another user pointed out in Mississippi's declaration of secession, their "position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery". If you abolish slavery, the South dies (in the economic sense, and in the cultural sense for white people) immediately. If you simply restrict slavery to this one corner of the country, the South dies slowly as its political power is curbed.
Remember the Upton Sinclair quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Similarly, people who would otherwise be on the fence about slavery were firmly in the pro-slavery camp because of the political and economic power inextricably tied to it.
That's not to say that the South was full of reluctant slave owners or anything. It was still one of the most racist times and places in human history. The South brutalized their slaves and they enjoyed doing it, or at best were indifferent to the brutality.
The South liked slavery. But it was the economic and political threat that meant fighting was their only course of action if they wanted to survive as a socio-economic bloc at all. If it weren't for the economic impact, they probably would have done like the North: got rid of their slaves (though not their racism...the North was extremely racist at the time too, a fact which history glosses over).
And we can see proof of this in the history of the South after they lost: abject poverty for generations. That was what they feared.
It's way more complicated than pro-slavery vs anti-slavery. On both sides. Yes, that was a central theme but there's an important distinction between "fighting to keep slaves" and "fighting to keep the economy built on slaves". The former is pure evil, the latter is the same kind of evil we all promote when we buy iphones or leggings assembled by child laborers in China.
I grew up in the South and went to college in the South, so I learned all of this. But I've since discovered that in the rest of the country, none of this context is taught. It's literally "these guys were all unrepentantly evil and we, the good people, defeated them". Like a fairy tale.
On the southern side it’s really not any more complicated than being pro-slavery. Not only secession, but throughout the 19th century southern states were pushing for the continuance and expansion of slavery, and actually resisted industrial development in the south because of the threat it posed, then as you point out fought to preserve slavery. And I’d love to know the difference between fighting to keep slaves and fighting to keep an economy built on slaves, and how a southern plantation owner who owns slaves and has great sway in government (or is in government) is in any way comparable to me with no political power buying an iPhone (or other smartphone) because of the difficulty surviving in the modern world without one.
And I’m sorry, I did not realize that southerners were all given in depth lessons about bleeding Kansas and the lead up to the civil war. You must be hiding them somewhere because all I ever get from southerners is the rote memorization of basic historical facts that seem to (but don’t) contradict popular narratives of the civil war with absolutely zero historical analysis, just like the picture. I’d much rather a layperson have the northern “fairy tale” understanding of the civil war that actually gets its reasons for occurring correct, than some both sides attitude towards it. I honestly cannot believe I typed out that whole thing above and what I get in response is some sort of “nuanced” confederate apologia.
Sometimes even the way slavery is taught, as if the point of slavery was to produce white supremacy rather than cotton and not the other way around, an economic system which these notions of race and white supremacy developed to explain and justify.
Then post-Civil War you have this Populist movement which condensed the interests of both black and white labor and really threatened the landowners, and out of that comes things like Booker T Washington's "Atlantic Compromise" and notions of race relations. It isn't really until the New Deal and the 50-60s with A. Philip Randolph and MLK Jr that you get any kind of serious civil rights connections to labor organizing again.
That isn't "technically correct". His statement said the Civil War. Not Lincoln. If you want to go and support the racial ramblings of a moron on Twitter, it would help to technically correct yourself.
If someone means "both sides thought it was about slavery" then initially no. The south absolutely left over slavery and stuff like the fugitive slave act ("states rights" and "right to property" 💀) but originally the union was just trying to get everything back together.
That's part of why it feels off.
Imagine this contrived metaphor. The union is a barber. The south paid for a haircut. The south says "This haircut sucks, I'm getting a refund with the bank." Then the union says "Actually you owe me money and can't do that." Is it correct to say this spat is about a haircut? I'd think so, yes. Let's say later the union decided "actually, I'm a good barber and it isn't just about the money." Is it correct to say the spat is now about a haircut? Definitely. So when someone says "The spat wasn't initially about a haircut, the union didn't care about their barber skills until later"... Is that correct? Technically. Does it make me suspicious they're trying to spread Lost Cause of the South propaganda? It definitely makes me suspicious.
Even if both sides didn't agree the war was about slaves originally the fucking Confederacy definitely believed it was about slavery the entire time and they were founded on slavery and mentioned it in their letters of secession and their founding documents. There's no ambiguity about that. Everything else is just a linguistic trick of whether a war being about something means both sides have to agree what it is about.
Most Americans naturally want the war to be about slavery—and they object to allegations it's not—because that's the morally righteous position, which is the position they want to believe their side held. So telling them the war was about slavery for the South, but the North really didn't give a shit, is not what they want to hear.
yeah I agree, people have a hard time hearing any criticism of Lincoln. I wouldn't say that he "didn't give a shit" because he was committed to stopping it's spread into the western territories (the position that caused secession). And he did express moral opposition to slavery. But he was a moderate and felt bound by the constitution that he couldn't actually outlaw slavery in the south, hoping that to stop its spread west would cause a gradual end to slavery as slaveowner political power wanes.
So he's a liberal who goes to war mostly to keep the union together, and his first thought is not really about the slaves. But he did do things, like when he issues the emancipation proclamation he ensures there is a legal argument that the slaves freed by it will remain free after the war. So it's not like Lincoln didn't care about the slaves. He was extremely moderate, but he did hold generally anti-slavery views.
Also it's hard to say "the north didn't give a shit" since abolitionism was strong in the north, John Brown was celebrated in the north. There were a lot of people who cared and were extremely opposed to slavery in the north. You have soldiers singing songs celebrating John Brown. Of course this was definitely not true of everyone lol.
So I don't think it's fair to just say the north was completely unconcerned with slavery, but there's a lot of complexity there, especially with Lincoln, and ultimately at the end of the day Lincoln had no plans to outlaw slavery and didn't declare war because of slavery.
As bad as this lie is, it's not as bad as the lie that "slavery was good for the slaves" that republicans are pushing now.
They were pushing that line before the civil war. Claimed that forcing Christianity on them made up for the slavery.
That's like saying "Yes, I gave you AIDS, but you should be thankful because I also gave you syphilis."
It's the same bullshit religious people say about the Bible. They are not slaves! Just indentured servants, that you can beat and brand! It's totally cool! They loved it!
It's a funny way of saying that they tried to thrive in an extremely shitty situation.
💀
fr fr
"People who say things that make me uncomfortable should be blocked" lol
So far I haven't seen one person in this whole thread say slavery was a good thing. The entire debate is "the Civil War was a simple good vs evil" or "the Civil War, like all things, had nuance and context".
I'm guessing you're in the simple camp.
Lincoln wanted to send the blacks back to Africa.
iT wAs AbOuT sTaTeS rIgHtS!
yeah states rights to do what exactly?
Well, the south lost their RIGHTS, and that's why NASCAR only turns LEFT.
Thanks dad.
Of course it was about slavery. Aka money. They were intrinsically linked, and outlawing slavery would have trashed their largely cash crop economy while the North's industrialization kept right on chugging away. The racism was more complicated but primarily served to keep the poor - free - white citizenry from realizing that the rich elite were the real enemy. Just like today, really.
I had some teachers pushing this bullshit. And they want to claim systemic racism doesn't exist.
The best part is when they refer to it as "The War of Northern Aggression." I suspect they will someday refer to WWII as "The War of Liberal Aggression."
The War of Anti-Fascist Aggression
or more succinctly:
The War of Antifa AggressionThey would call it socialist agression because of the Z in NAZI.
The party was the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische deutsche Arbeiterpartei / National Socialist German Workers' Party). Nazi was just the abbreviation. So yes, but not because of the Z.
It's, I think, sort of true that the Civil War wasn't always going to necessarily mean the end of slavery if the north won.
It started as a war to keep the union together, and initially a lot of people in the north thought that it would end quickly and that the states would return to the union and give up their rebellion.
However, as time went on and the losses started to pile up, it became clear to Lincoln and the other northern leaders that a war with this much bloodshed must end the slavery debate for good. That is why Lincoln ultimately wrote and delivered the Emancipation Proclamation.
But it's a point that's splitting a lot of hairs and very nuanced, because the Civil War started when pro-slavery states seceded from the union because they were afraid that a president elected without consent from any of the southern states might move to eliminate slavery...so summarily, the Civil War was definitely about slavery from beginning to end.
TL;DR: The Civil War was about slavery.
Right: the north wasn't fighting about slavery, it was fighting secession.
But the south was seceding about slavery.
The south started the civil war, over slavery.
The confederacy only existed to preserve and expand slavery.
I’ve found this quote from Lincoln to be illustrative.
“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
I also find the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves living in border States, but only States that seceded to corroborate this.
That being said, Lincoln had long been know to oppose slavery and supported its abolition.
Read the Confederate constitution and that’ll put this debate to rest.
Yes, the reasons lie somewhere between "it wasn't about it" and "it was only about it". Slavery was a major issue of course but a deeper feeling of cultural separation was under it. The nation back then wasn't nearly as federal as it is now, it was much more a collection of states and people felt that way. Gen Lee always said his loyalty was first to Virginia, he didn't say the US and not the Confederacy. The north was much more industrialized and the south much more rural. Also slaves were expensive and you had a southern elite of wealthy landowners who owned the vast majority of slaves who had much more to lose from abolition than the average poor white person. In fact West Virginia broke away and Tennessee remained mostly neutral because the people in the mountainous areas rarely had slaves. When states became free or slave then it became a matter of whether new states should be free or slave states, further fanning the fires. "Bleeding Kansas" was a mini civil war before the civil war. The wealthy southern landowners saw every free state as a step towards abolition, others saw it as a threat to state's rights by an increasingly powerful federal gov. Ironically the cotton gin actually increased the demand for slaves instead of reducing it.
The war wasn't always popular in the north, especially early on and you had vicious draft riots in NYC and a Massachusetts unit was viciously attacked while passing through Baltimore.
I'll add to your comment on the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln also wanted to make the war more than just about reuniting the nation and for a higher cause. He also wanted to make it clear to the now abolitionist British that siding with the Confederates (the British were big consumers of southern cotton) would put them on the wrong side.
Just to clarify, the union then was MUCH more federal (small "f")--the power was more divided between states and Washington. What we always call the Federal government they often called the National or General government since federal rule inherently has regional governments.
The Civil War, while not about States' Rights in the sense neo-Confederates claim, did weaken the states, though the 16th and 17th Amendments and the New Deal really did them in. It's hard for our generation to conceive of every topic not being a national issue.
Nonono. It was about Cotton Picking Rights.
The Civil War didn't begin over slavery but the South seceded over slavery. It's complex but yeah Lincoln was originally ambivalent towards abolition in 1861.
This is a bad take. The trend in the US and elsewhere was abolition. One reason for secession was the South could see the writing on the wall. Lincoln's election being the most obvious sign.
We could imagine the South losing the war and keeping slavery, but only for a short while.
The easiest counter to the States’ Rights argument is “States’ Rights to do what?”.
The easiest way is to just show them each state's letter of secession. They were not shy about it. No need for a deep historical analysis, it's right there many times over in plain English.
Even today tbh. They never advocate for state's rights to make life better for people, only for oppression.
This is why we need school standards. I was taught this at home and believed it till I got to college.
They are part right, if we really want to give them the benefit of the doubt. For the south it was absolutely about preserving slavery, but for the north abolishing it was still kind of a controversial topic.
The decision to make it about ending slavery from Lincoln's part was part tactical, even though he personally always wanted to do so anyway. It made a lot of former slaves and other black people available for enlistment and also secured the support of people opposing slavery.
But initially it was more about the southern paranoia of the north forcing them to abolish slavery and since the north could not provide any security about this, they decided to quit, which lead the north to try and preserve the union.
At least as far as I know.
Lincoln believed that the Founding Fathers intended for slavery to eventually fade away to extinction. But for this to happen, there could be no further spread of slavery into new states. The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act both steered slavery down a different path of proliferation.
Lincoln's policy during the Republican nomination and general election was to follow the path laid out by the Constitution. Meaning: honor the fugitive slave law and to make no infringements upon the South's right to slavery. However, Lincoln made it very clear that slavery will remain only where it currently was in place. There would be no further spreading of slavery into newly adopted states.
Most of my information comes from the book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a Lincoln biography.
Such a great read. Goodwin is a national treasure.
There was an article I read a wile back so I may be misremembering. It claimed they the wealth of southern plantations was the slaves, the land and other assets were worth hardly anything. Many of these places had large amounts of debt tied to the value of their slaves. The fear was not just that the north would make slavery illegal, but that the actions being taken to limit slavery in new states would cause the price of slaves to drop and make all the rich slave owners broke.
Now, hear me out! It wasn't about Slavery, it was about not ending Slavery!
It was about states’ rights…to slavery!
exactly!
fighting a war over slavery was so fun for texas; they did it twice and the american civil war was the second one.
and then continued with segregation; you would think they learn their lesson by now. lol
No one ever accused Texans of being smart.
As a born and raised Texan, I completely agree.
Hey fuck you buddy! 🖕What intellectual stronghold are you a resident of?
Just look at the primary source documents that declare the purpose of the war, Mississippi is a good example:
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.
none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.
I mean I know this was pre-sunscreen, but still, the slavers were a bunch of pussies.
All of SE Asia: am I a joke to you?
(answer is probably yes tbh)
I love the info, but a citation would have been good. Here you go: https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/a-declaration-of-the-immediate-causes-which-induce-and-justify-the-secession-of-the-state-of-mississippi-from-the-federal-union-1861
This is the shit you get when your knowledge of history is based solely on broadcasts from your preferred 24-hour news network and/or Youtube.
Apparently reading history books is hard.
(Also, for everyone here, read up on Benjamin Lay. The founding fathers knew what piece of shit slavers they were because there was at least one prominent person willing to tell them in the Mid-1700's.)
Lincoln wanted to send the blacks back to Africa. Many in fact didn't see them as humans tbh.
The guy gets his history from Tiktok.
HistoryTok is way more fun than real history, it changes when the most popular video says something. Doesn't have to be fact based or remotely correct, but has more likes.
Just decontextualized nonsense. I suspect this is a corruption of some idea about lincoln's thoughts about slavery paired with some wholly fabricated victimhood propaganda about the slave states.
For anyone who (like me) had trouble with history: After Kansas elected to be a free state the soon-to-be confederacy saw the writing on the wall for slavery. When the electoral college fucked up with a split vote between 4 candidates lincoln (an abolitionist) came out on top after several vote rounds as he was the closest to start. Instead of taking the political L peacefully the pro-slavery faction decided to kill as many people as possible and got wrecked.
After Kansas elected to be a free state the soon-to-be confederacy saw the writing on the wall for slavery.
Yes but the writing on the wall for slavery probably would have looked like a gradual process of reforms that slowly chipped away at enslaver power.
It was the end of southern domination of the American political system.
It was the end of southern domination of the American political system.
Technically, they are still dominating our political system through minority rule.
It was the end of southern domination of the American political system.
Is it fair to say Virginia's dominance of the American political system? Granted, it takes two to tango but Virginia was in the driver's seat for many decades leading up to and following ratification of the Constitution.
The war was absolutely about slavery. The sad thing is most of the people who died didn't have a hole to piss in. A rich man's war fought by poor men.
Lincoln was not an abolitionist, and made express remarks to the contrary during his campaign.
"I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races ... I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
Taking any statement as representative of a person without full context is shady at best.
Stephen Douglas had just accused him of being an abolitionist. He was listing all the "extreme" views radical abolitionists held that go beyond just the end of slavery. He was maintaining the Republican Party stance of halting the expansion of slavery without directly supporting equality.
Its the same as a modern liberal getting called a socialist because they hold one view that lines up with socialism, then replying with a laundry list of very-socialist things they don't support.
Instead of taking the political L peacefully
Political blocs don't die easy. Like the modern Republican party, they'll fight to save their own power.
This wasn't just one political loss, it was the doom of the Southern power bloc.
Saying something with the word “fact” at the end makes it true. Fact.
I am confused about this sentence because this is obviously true. Not sure what to make of this.
You now understand and agree with the previous post as well this one. Fact.
2+2=5. Fact.
This statement is false. Fact.
As long as you don't ask the traitor leadership, who said over and over again that the war is explicitly about slavery and enslaving PoC in particular. The legalization of slavery was a requirement for entry into the confederacy. It was built into their constitution that anyone who wanted to join had to allow slavery.
And let's not forget that it was plainly written or alluded to (calling it a 'peculiar institution') into nearly all of traitorous states' declarations of secession.
Lost Cause Cultists make me sick.
Imagine being proud of being a racist loser, I don't get it
This is what happens you mix moonshine and cousin fucking.
it can be said that one leads to the other, and vica versa
When someone comes at you with this, hit 'em with the cornerstone speech. Never had it fail yet.
Too bad that when the North won, the South moved towards segregation with the Jim Crow laws because they were a bunch of racist shit headed sore losers.
Lincoln's assassination fucked things up to the point that even now, we're dealing with the effects of a botched postwar reconstruction.
Ironically Booth killed the guy who wanted to forgive the south
And a lot of them still are
Further wrecking their own society/economy just to hurt the former slaves. So stupid.
That's how they teach it in Floriduh.
#confederationly incorrect
So, prepare for nuance. There is the slightest bit of truth in what they're saying. Lincoln did not initially make the war about slavery. Yes, the south 100% did leave over slavery, but originally the war was just about getting the states back together. It still feels incredibly disingenuous to say "the war wasn't about slavery" because of that though. For one side leaving it was, it just wasn't about slavery to the other side yet. I'd have to see the context of this comment but I feel hard pressed to imagine it as anything other than Lost Cause propaganda.
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." -Abraham Lincoln
It wasn't about slavery, it was about owning people, okay?! Duh!
Owning people was expensive! I mean come on, it’s clearly not about slavery. It was about money!
Ol' Pudding Fingers says they actually enjoyed it and there were lots of benefits
Someone from the Florida Education Department probably bookmarked that 'Fact' for the next round of History Book printing.
Of course it wasn't about slavery, it was about taxes!
Abraham Lincoln, alone, ordered the invasion of the States soley to collect an average 40% federal sales tax (200% on plows and stoves used by pioneer farmers) to fatten the wallets of his Wall Street owners, who elected him with only 39% of the popular vote.
Abraham Lincoln declared his War was over taxes ONLY and not slavery, at all.
https://confederateheritage.org/BFMP-Lockhart.html
Saw that monument on a road trip once.
This has got me fucked up, so that I'm not sure what I even know anymore. Was Wall Street even a concept when Lincoln was alive?
I'd never really thought about it, but 1792, Wall Street essentially came into being. So yeah.
If it fucked you up seeing a random pic on the internet, just imagine you're driving down the highway and see this ugly monstrosity with a confederate flag waving proudly in the proverbial breeze. You see more confederate flags around here than American. I'm moving soon.
Regarding your question, idk about wall street and I'm curious how old the memorial even is. It looks fairly new-ish and reeks of modern revisionist history. Can't really find many details and further research is making me nauseous so you're welcome to investigate.
I've had high school history teachers spout similar nonsense
So the post does have a tiny bit of truth to it, then goes wildly false.
As far as I know, Lincoln was not an abolishonist. He wanted to keep the status quo and allow southerners to keep their slaves and the northerners to continue to not allow slavery. He felt the Constitution protected the southerner's "property". The Union was what he cared about. I do think he was against adding more slavery in other states, and that's probably why southern states seceded.
Freeing existing slaves did come after an early loss in the war.
I'm just learning about all this now in a podcast, but I haven't completed the series so I could be very wrong. Or the podcast could be. It's American History Tellers.
I kind of see it as Lincoln was almost a modern day centrist democrat. Basically there was an abolition plan... that was going to take a very long time. IE rather than going with abolishing slavery, the plan was that no new states would become slave states, and overtime the non slave country would have the votes to abolish slavery. Kind of reminds me a lot of say healthcare goes on today.
and just like modern day republicans... the confederate states made it clear they'd rather burn down the country than accept a slow change from the status quo.
Second guy has a great point, but doesnt he know you cant argue with someone that ends with "fact", cause it automatically makes them right?
Facts?
Only alternative facts these days please
That works too. Just say anything you like, put that at the end and it automatically makes it true.
Oh come on, I'm sure he's heard much dumber fucking things.
Actually it was about the blooming onion becoming the national dish, what the northern states absolutely refused, because they couldn't agree on the dip.
Wait people still think America had or has their best interest? Fuck we're dead.
"Harmonizing the interest betwixt capital and labor, Southern slavery has solved the problem over which states-men have toiled and philanthropists mourned from the first existence of organized society" (American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, III (1859), pp. 105-106.).
I mean, he isn't ENTIRELY wrong, he's just mostly wrong.
Anything seems like it can be true when you don't know anything.
If you can discern between actual facts and racist bullshit your grandpa told you, you shall inherit the earth my son.
As I learned it in public schools long before everything became a political football, slavery was not the main focus of Lincoln's administration initially. It was all about the constitution and the Union. The seceding states, however, had slavery very much on the top of their list of grievances. Lincoln politically embraced abolition as part of his effort to rally the unionists and gain the support of the slaves somewhere in the early stages. I don't know if it was before or after secession. I suspect it was after the secession because he was focusing on the constitutional issues of dividing the union.
So, yes the civil war was all about slavery. The southern states wanted to expand slavery into the new territories, which was not allowed in the constitution. They wanted to protect and expand slavery as an institution. Some useful information from the Lincoln Home.
The truth is that the upper middle class (today's equivalent of Democrats) wanted to enjoy the fruits of slavery too. Lincoln needed the support of the abolitionists (today's leftists) or he would have probably never gone to war.
Notable "leftists" including wealthy landowner Cassius Clay: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassius_Marcellus_Clay_(politician)
Or secretary of the (very leftist) US Treasury Salmon Chase https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_P._Chase
You know, leftists
Until you read about Lincoln happening upon slave markets as a young man and having trouble controlling himself over how much it enraged him.
Imagine it as one of many things in today's world that a politician might want to change but it's so polarizing that they can't actively act on it, instead electing to act on easier, smaller goals everyone might get behind.
If you read the writings of the time, they might have had trouble including abolition to their agenda, but pretty much everyone was ready to jump on board as soon as it was.
The Cornerstone speech?!?!
I agree that the civil war was about slavery and that it's ignorant to deny it, but "I have a degree and you surely don't, by the authority vested in me I declare you an idiot" is a terrible format for an argument, almost any other way of putting it would be better.
I can say from experience that having expertise in an area where people deny reality because of politics can be absolutely exhausting. You can spend your whole life trying to counter the bullshit with fact and get nowhere. Arguing in good faith with someone who argues in bad faith is a losing game. Sometimes you just want to say "Shut up, I know more than you".
Ugh I totally feel it. I have a PhD in sociology... sociology. If another person tells me that my research is just my opinion or that they have a one off anecdotal story that disproves any research I talk about, I might throw up on them. It's very difficult to be civil. But I try my best to educate and remain calm.
Sometimes you just want to say “Shut up, I know more than you”.
That is fair, I just think it won't do any good, and people who say more than that are doing good, even if they don't get to see it. Not saying the right move is to get sucked into a point by point debate with someone trying to spread lies, but anyone reading could benefit from being pointed in the direction of reality even if they won't thank you for it.
So the fact that this person clearly has researched said subject enough to get a degree in it to know what they're talking about vs some dude who is quite possibly pulling bullshit out his ass doesn't allow for said learned person to tell said non-learned person they are an idiot?
Because sometimes I think it kinda does.
Pretty sure they have a problem with using that expertise to call them an idiot instead of offering counterpoints.
A lot of the people on Lemmy seem to think the Internet isn't a casual space and think engaging with these types of people in those spaces will somehow change their opinions.
It doesn't give anyone new information, it's hostile in a way that could turn anyone on the fence against them and make everyone disagreeing dig their feet in more, and claiming expertise on the internet doesn't mean much because people lie constantly. You can demonstrate through writing that you know what you're talking about without asking people to take your word for it, you can make references. If you don't have time for an effortpost you can summarize, link, or quote an argument someone else made while putting it in context.
There are really excellent arguments against all kinds of misconceptions, it is a shame if what ends up spread around are schoolyard level clapbacks instead of those. r/AskHistorians in particular has some really good ones, including about this specific issue.
As a rule of thumb I think anytime you are invoking your expertise, you should also be sharing some of it.
Agreed. It’s not !clevercomebacks material.
Let's please not pretend somebody who knows something about a subject needs to say any more than Bullshit to deliberate liars.
I think it is basically never helpful to make that sort of argument. Did not imply there's an obligation to say something else.
It was about slavery, but it wasn't about slavery in terms of what Lincoln was trying to do initially. He would have actively allowed it to continue if it kept the nation together, but ultimately had to use it to build efforts for the war.
He didn't read these comments, then
There are few things that exhaust and discourage me more than reductionists shouting past each other.
the only thing I can think of that's worse is the guy who stands on the sidelines, refuses to take a position and shits on everyone as though he's contributing to the discussion.
I stand only with every other layer of abstract sideline-shitting
I stopped trying to contribute to battles between reductionists many years ago, since they're not coincidentally also binarists, so each just takes the fact that I'm not 100% in agreement with them to mean that I'm on the falsely dichotomous other side.
That's an awful lot of why they're so exhausting and discouraging - because I know from bitter experience that there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. I'm constantly tempted to respond - just, if nothing else, to for instance point out that something as enormously complex as the US Civil War cannot possibly rightly be said to have been about one specific thing - but I've learned that that can't possibly accomplish anything.
Should I then have just kept my mouth shut? Probably, in much the same way as I'd likely just keep walking if I saw two drunks brawling in an alley.
But I didn't, and so be it.
And who knows? Maybe somebody somewhere will read this and think, "You know... it really is kind of dumb to reduce a complex issue to just one single idea, then get into shouting matches with people who have reduced it to some other single idea."
Or not. And again, so be it.
Old repost is old
Yeah, I mean the civil war happened quite a while ago… There’s no rule about how recent the original post should be in this community. Rules and posting guidelines are in the sidebar.
It has quite a few seeds of truth. 11 Southern states wanted to secede from the US, which would have made the Northern states collapse (because the South was exporting huge amounts of food to the big cities in the North), so Lincoln needed to weaken them.
Lincoln's move to set the slaves free in 1863 was exactly that, it was to undermine the South during the Civil War. The Northern states had slaves too, but the Southern ones directly depended on them, and it gave a good narrative about what the Civil War would "actually" be about.
The Midwest was the bread basket at that time. The South was mostly cash crops. The South also couldn't support themselves because they had no industry. That's why Britain and France didn't support them.
By the Civil War slavery was outlawed in Northern states.
