I lived next door in Kentucky growing up. It wasn’t nearly as rooted there (teachers were always quick to point out that our state didn’t secede, in fact), but that framing did come up in the classroom.
Of course, when you are also taught that the Civil War started when Confederate forces in South Carolina shelled a Union naval base, it’s a bit more difficult to swallow the “the North started it” whine.
I was coming here to jokingly say “well, truth be told there was that one guy, Beaufort Lee Sims III from South Carolina who fought for the Confederacy because he hated Ulysses Grant for that time he cheated good ol’ Beaufort at a game of horseshoes.”
But of course someone was fucking dumb enough to actually try to seriously say “But…but…but…there were other reasons”.
Yeah…no.
No. It wasn’t a “war to free the slaves”. It was a war to preserve slavery. And the South lost that war.
But it WAS about state’s rights.
The state’s right to legalize slavery.
Already done by Harry Turtledove:
Even that’s misleading, because states had fewer rights regarding their own laws on slavery under the Confederate Constitution than they did under the United States Constitution.
even texas had a cavalry regiment that fought for the union side. i wish i could find an ancestor on the roster of that unit but the traceable ancestors of mine either sat out the war as too young or too old or they fought for the confederacy.
Willful denial, cognitive dissonance, and an intentional, ongoing effort by TPTB to ‘dumb down’ the American populace since at least the end of the 2nd world war.
Try multiply him by millions. There’s an estimated 11 million people who believe in white nationalism or white supremacy, and that doesn’t even touch on the others who are just racist without any of the white nationalism stuff to wrap around it like a Christmas present. https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-demography-of-the-alt-right
My guess is that he and his buddies have about three minutes worth of rhetorical buzzwords formed into sentences that “resembles” an argument they all enthusiastically agree with. Suddenly in front of a camera, lights, and a discerning interviewer, he realizes how shallow his bubbled arguments are and freezes under criticism.
Certainly WV seceded from VA rather than the US at least in part because they were poorer and the mountainous terrain was unsuited to plantations. Heck, most of the rest of VA was unsuited to Cotton cultivation. ISTR that the most valuable agricultural export from VA was slaves. The were worked to death at a low enough rate that it was a self sustaining population, unlike in the deep South where cotton was a big crop.
yes. although the oft heard argument that workers in Northern sweat shops were worse off because they didn’t have these things provided to them is disproved the the simple fact that slaves were very expensive. The difference between the cost of free labor and the cost of feeding, clothing, housing and torturing the work out of slaves was high enough that the slaves themselves were very expensive.
The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it-when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell”.
Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth
- Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens
Savannah, Georgia, on March 21, 1861
I wish so much that more people were familiar with the Cornerstone Speech, along with the statements in the various statements of secession. The confederates may have been totally wrong or at least mislead, but they were unquestionably literate, intelligent men and left an extensive record of exactly why they did what they did. In order to hold the beliefs that these folks do, you have to start by discarding the statements made by the very people they claim to be venerating. Of course, they don’t actually give a damn about those historical people, only that they provide an excuse to hold racist beliefs that are otherwise indefensible.
Yep, which the people whose job it is to study this period have noted over and over again. Professional historians of the civil war agree that it was indeed slavery…
And the rebel flag waving idiots continue to deny, since said authorities are, of course, liberal eggheads.
Worse, they’re probably secretly carpetbaggers!
The North did start it, by making progress towards ending the practice of slavery.
It was already a bit of a national embarrassment on the world stage and there was growing pressure to end the practice. Even if the south had won the war and their right to independence the international pressure against the practice would have made it untenable in a few short decades anyway. Cotton is an export crop, you have to care what other countries think. It was a war to prop up and old and decaying system and the rich assholes who benefited from it.
What are you, some kinda historian or something?!?
