I would say that the rights of people to transit slaves in states where slavery was illegal was not decided in 1788 but rather in the Dred Scott decision of 1859. Which meant that it wasn’t so much the institution of slavery that was in peril as the idea of a free state. I always find it interesting that even the confederacy, bound and determined as it was to preserve slavery as an institution didn’t lift the ban on the importation of slaves, largely because that would have lowered the value of the slaves already IN the South.
Yes, because apologists for the United States run rampant on BB–this slavery topic thing is just a way for us to get the feelz and revel in discussions about the greatness of Dubbya’s “extraordinary rendition”.
It depends on how much respect you have for Karl Marx.
I prefer Marx to the current ideology of the Republican party, even though I know he would have thrown me out of the First International along with Mikhael Bakunin and the other anarchists.
If it was Stalin writing the letter instead of Marx, then it would be similar to Godwinning
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RationalWiki on Dennis Prager. He’s a creepy homophobe who thinks that Keith Ellison taking his oath of office on a Koran is worse than 9/11. Also, it’s nice that someone from West Point is acknowledging that the Confederates were traitors, but AFAIK there’s still a statue of Robert E. Lee at the Academy.
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About 6 months ago I was given a private tour of the U.S. Capitol by staff from a Republican senator’s office. (No, it’s too long a story to go into!) When we got to the main Statuary Hall, I gave them both a stern talking-to about the fact that we have THREE Confederate traitors to the U.S. honored by standing in that hall and officially representing their states: Jefferson Davis, representing Mississippi; Robert E. Lee, representing Virginia; and Alexander Stephens (Confederate V.P. under Davis), representing Georgia.
There may be a few others I didn’t know well enough to pick out by name only.
They looked at me like deer in the headlights. It was great!
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Wow, I just thought it was a convenient way to feel superior.
Perhaps you’re just disappointed in the site.
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Did the South secede to protect slavery or not?
You can argue that the North was motivated by taxes, power, territory, etc., but slavery was an extremely contentious issue in the US for years prior to 1861, the issue of slavery even instigated a mini-war in Kansas that historians typically consider a precursor to the Civil War. In other words, a war over slavery was coming for a long time, and at the time everyone knew it was about one issue above all others, despite what any politician might claim. No matter what the North was “really” fighting for, slavery was the underlying issue of the war, and if there hadn’t been slavery, then there would have been no war.
As for carpetbaggers, do you really think that without Northerners coming into the South then sharecropping and Jim Crow laws would never have existed? Hey, maybe it was Northerners who founded the KKK too.
I don’t hate the South. I think it’s a great place with lot’s of nice people, but Southerners should stop pretending their ancestors don’t have blood on their hands over the issue of slavery. I’m not proud Yankees were responsible for the wholesale slaughter of entire tribes native Americans in New England, but I’m not about to pretend it didn’t happen to make me feel better about my home.
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What site?
I already answered that.
Southerners seceded and fought for more than one reason and it is quite possible that individual southerner’s and northerner’s fought for individual reasons. While slavery’s role in the causes of the war is undeniable, it is historically inaccurate to say that the war was fought over slavery. (even if that does give you the warm fuzzies) The North exploited their slaves after the war and continued to exploit the blacks in the south even until this day. Many of the blacks who left the south found themselves confined to ghettos and exploited in the north.
Except that all those “other” issues (economic, so-called “state’s rights,” etc.) were tied either directly or indirectly to slavery. It wasn’t that the North and South had that many fundamental differences, it’s that there were many different aspects of their single biggest difference.
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That doesn’t mean the North fought to end slavery.
They fought, they ended slavery. That’s good enough to put them on the right side of history.
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You’re so right. America has been so great for black Americans since 1865! There has never been a race riot north of the Mason-Dixon.
Imperfection since doesn’t disqualify it as the step forward that it was.
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Who here would deny the end of slavery is a step forward? I’d call that an understatement. It’s too bad that wasn’t what the north was fighting for. Either way I am thankful that something good came from such a tragedy except that life was not much better for many blacks under northern rule for many many years. Unfortunately, tribalism, racism and the desire to exploit the weak is not just a southern affliction.
Yes, the North kept their slaves. . . for about 7 months after the war ended, until the ratification of the 13th amendment banning slavery. You phrase it like slavery remained legal in the North for decades. The fact is slavery in the North was tiny compared to slavery in the South, so any comparison you make still hurts the South.
Huh? If you’re going to take the broader issue of racism and say that’s evidence of “the North” exploiting blacks (while apparently deflecting any blame for the South) then there’s really no reasoning with you. I don’t deny that for more than 100 years after the Civil War it was very difficult for African Americans in the USA, nor do I defend the larger issue of entrenched racism today, but I don’t think living in a ghetto in Chicago is worse (or even comparable) to being lynched in Mississippi for looking at a white woman (and I know those emigres to Chicago would tell you the same-- they wanted to move North.) How exactly is “the North” exploiting blacks in the South today?
You can’t really defend the aims and atrocities of the antebellum South, nor the bitter truth of the post war Jim Crow South, so you smear the North and try to bring Yankees down to the same level, except you can’t (except perhaps in your own mind.)
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Why did they keep them that long? Why did they even have slaves when the war started? Did the south force them to keep slaves before and during the war?
Sure slaves wanted to move north…except they were often surprised at what they found there. Slavery existed long after 1865 in the north and south except after the war, the south was largely under northern control. Meet the new boss…same as the old boss. Slavery is slavery under any other name.
Again, you’re comparing a relatively tiny number of slaves in the North with the huge numbers in the South (at one point slaves nearly outnumbered whites in South Carolina), and somehow saying this makes the North worse. Most of the North had outlawed slavery by 1800, and during the war most of the non-Confederate slave states outlawed slavery on their own (by war’s end only Delaware and Kentucky still had legal slavery.)
Why did they take seven months? Because that’s how long it took to pass the amendment. A better question is: why did it take a war to get the South to give up their slaves?
The argument that life in a ghetto is the same as life as a slave has absolutely no merit whatsoever.
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I don’t recall anyone saying that except you.
I wouldn’t exactly say they gave them up. They unwillingly turned them over to new northern bosses, but not without a fight.
