Greatest American? (All Over on Page Eight)

[Brother Shatterstone]

The problem with disscusions like this is when people bring modern day ethics into it. All southners are evil because they supported slavery or supported a goverment that allowed it.I guess anyone who has Italian blood has some taint because the Romans kept slaves oh so did a lot of the celtic populations and lets not forget the medeval serfs.

I agree with this, it wasn't as if everyone north of the Masion Dixion Line was apposed to slavery.

Really both sides of the fight had good reasons to fight it; it wouldn't have taken the toll that it did if this wasn't abundantly clear, just like both sides had/has people to admire and people to despise.

If you truly want to understand history you have to be able to look at it without so much prejudice. I have said before that I as a modern person find the idea of slavery to be truly evil and wrong.

I agree with this too.

 

[diaglo]

Yes, but we should not.

[/i]

Yes, and it should not.

i don't disagree.

i'm just waiting for a great american to have the balls to say something.

 

[diaglo]

Except that Lincoln wasn't going to send him troops. He considered it to be too provocative an act.

but there was no telephone. he didn't know that.

he hoped and planned lincoln would

he gambled wrong

got attacked
and had to surrender

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

And were also the elected representatives of the populace. Those who did not want to support slavery had options.

Right, the poor farmer with no slaves can really spare the time to run for elected office...

The only reasonable basis for sucession was the preservation of slavery.

I guess you've never heard of state rights, huh?

 

[Storm Raven]

Do you have some understanding of what was entailed in just freeing the slaves? The south's economy was based on slavery. It was not something that could just change overnight with out destroying the south.

I do. And it doesn't matter. Slavery was important to the economy of many other nations, and they made the sacrifice. Slavery could have been abolished in the 1810s with a minimum of trauma, but it wasn't. Slavery could have been abolished in any number of ways, but it was not.

I believe in time that it would have happened. Social pressure, the coming of more labor saving devices. Machines are cheaper than humans to maintain.

Instead the south was backed against a wall and we know what the outcome of that was. The southern economy was destroyed for years it did not start to recover until the middle of the 1900s. Blacks certainly did not have an easy time of it a lot of them ended up as sharecroppers with no more protections than they had as slaves. Look how many blacks were lynched and most of the people doing it got away with it.

Backed into a wall of their own making. The only reason they seceeded was that Lincoln was elected. Despite his repeated statements that he not only did not intend to try to abolish slavery, he didn't think he had the legal power to do so, they threw a hissy fit and seceeded. If they had stayed in the Union, it is likely that slavery would have been just fine until, as you believe, it was peacefully abolished.

Lincoln and the north may have freed the slaves but they did nothing to make sure the freeded slaves would be okay.

Untrue. There was a concerted effort to ensure the freedmen would have both economic means of support and political well-being. The Freedman's Bureau was established to provide assistance, federal troops were sent to ensure that blacks could vote in elections, and many formerly Confederate state legislatures had black members in the 1860s and 1870s.

The Klu Klux Klan, and other similar organizations worked hard to make sure these efforts failed.

 

[Elf Witch]

There's not even a basis for that sort of comparison.

The States had agreed to the government of the United States via the U.S. Constitution, and were represented in Congress, allowed to vote for President and so on. They consented to the sovereignty of the United States by participating in the 1860 elections.

By contrast, the colonists were not represented in Parliament, had no say in the selection of their nation's chief executive, and could not fairly be said to have consented to their government at all.

This really depends on what side you were on. The British felt that the colonies were represented by Parliament because Parliament represented everyone.

The point I was making is that the colonies formed there own country because they felt that England did not represent them. They felt Parliament did not have their best intrests when making laws and passing taxes.

The south felt the same way. They felt that the federal goverment would soon be controlled by a majority who did not have their best iintrests in mind when passing laws. So they did what their grandfathers did.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

Do you have some understanding of what was entailed in just freeing the slaves? The south's economy was based on slavery. It was not something that could just change overnight with out destroying the south.

Yeah, it kind of makes you want to defend your homeland doesn't it?

 

[Storm Raven]

Right, the poor farmer with no slaves can really spare the time to run for elected office...

Probably not, but he could afford to vote for representatives who wouldn't be in favor of sucession. And he could avoid serving in the Confederate army.

I guess you've never heard of state rights, huh?

The only states' rights issue that was being "threatened" was the right to keep slaves. And it wasn't.

 

[Storm Raven]

but there was no telephone. he didn't know that.

There was the telegraph.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Its hard to say WHAT the individual soldiers were really fighting for...but look at it this way.

For the north, it was much, much easier to tell the troops they were fighting to end slavery, instead of the convulted bunch of other reasons there really was.

For the south, they didn't need to be told they were defending their way of life. That was plainly obvious to them. But, at the same time, they did bring about what happened to them...that doesn't mean that the civilians deserved anything that occurred, but that, sadly, is something that happens in war. Every war. Civilians always end up paying some price because of the actions of their government, and it isn't always so easy to just pull out and fight for the other side if you don't agree with things.