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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elf Witch" data-source="post: 5823763" data-attributes="member: 9037">Well then you have never hung around on many history sites and discussed the civil war. They took up arms to preserve their way of life to protect their economy. My great grandfather's family owned a dry goods store they did not keep slaves because it was not cost efficient for them. It was cheaper to put their families to work in the store than to keep slaves who had to be feed and clothed. I admire him because of everything he accomplished in his life both during the war and after.Are you ashamed that the Deceleration of Independence was written by a slave owner and the first president of the United States was a slave owner? Do you think we should take down any monument to George Washington because he is someone we should be ashamed of?I was taught by my history professor that if you truly want to understand why something happened you have to look at without your modern day morality coloring the facts.  So many people don't really have any kind of understanding of what was happening politically at the time of the Civil War all they can see is slavery bad. So they truly don't understand why the war happened. Slavery is an emotional issue but here is the sad truth and that is almost every culture has had some form of slavery. Back in the Victorian times the poor houses were a form of legalized slavery. Whole families were sentenced to them and forced to work for pennies in dangerous conditions. After the civil war the same men who had said slavery was wrong became railroad barons and hired cheap labor in the form of Chinese workers they were kept in deplorable conditions and were often killed or beaten to death. Military scholars often write papers on Robert E Lee because he was a brilliant tactician I have read his journals and the anguish he felt over taking arms against men he had admired and trained with. It is much more simpler I guess to paint everyone in the south as evil bad men because they owned slaves and fought for the right not be told what to do by the majority whose economy would not have been effected by this. I have a question if you had family who served with Custer would you be ashamed? Even knowing some of the horrible abuses of innocent life that the US Army did in breaking the will of the plains Indians? Are you ashamed that your own country just 50 years ago put your fellow country men in interment camps just because they were of Japanese ancestry?The point I making here is that it easy to throw around words like shame when talking about our history. History is not like DnD filled with clear cut alignments it is made up of human beings who at times could be flawed but who were very much a product of their times. As a human race we have grown but we still have much growth ahead of us I wouldn't be surprise if 200 years from now most people look back at us as a bunch of barbarians.I am only ashamed for my actions.</blockquote>

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