Most Americans in Abraham Lincoln's day were Christians. (Christians who didnt own slaves.) Prove me wrong.

[pood]

The war was entirely about slavery ..

That's what I thought

Please see Clarification of Rule 7, “falsely quoting posters,” here.

 

[Lion IRC]

You can't take an absolute statement out of 'context''.

There's no 'nuance' here pal!

The war was entirely about slavery...

 

[pood]

You can't take an absolute statement out of 'context''.

There's no 'nuance' here pal!

The war was entirely about slavery...

OK, I am going to report the post. It was not an “absolute statement.” As noted, it was in the context of explaining the SOUTHERN reason for the war, in response to Steve. I was responding to his claim that from the SOUTHERN point of view, the war was about states’ rights vs. Federal rights. Once again, I was pointing out that from the SOUTHERN point of view, it was all about preserving and extending slavery. From the NORTHERN point of view, it was about PRESERVING THE UNION. Now enough of this. I am going to report this post along with prior incidents of how you mutilated EricH’s quotes. This is a detestable pattern of yours.

 

[pood]

Post reported.

 

[pood]

I agree that the war was in the end was about states' rights vs federal government.

Slavery was not addressed in the constitution because it wound not get support.

Slavery was indeed addressed in the constitution with weasel words — “persons held to service.”

The war was entirely about slavery and had nothing to do with states’ rights vs. federal rights. This fact is proved by Alexander Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech and by the fact that at the end of the war the central Confederate government was trying to take over everything it could and blatantly usurp “states’ rights.” “States’ rights’ is BS palaver for apologists for racists.

Here is the above quote that Lion mutilated with his ellipses. It is abundantly clear that I was talking about the SOUTHERN rationale for war, and not the NORTHERN rationale, whereas Lion’s quote-mine falsely implied I was talking about the north.

 

[Lion IRC]

It was not an “absolute statement.”

Yes, it was.
That's what the word "entirely" means.

I'm entitled to agree with your assertion that it was "entirely about slavery" without obliging myself to agree with whatever other irrelevant red herrings you simultaneously think somehow make it NOT ENTIRELY about slavery.

 

[bilby]

It was not an “absolute statement.”

Yes, it was.
That's what the word "entirely" means.

I'm entitled to agree with your assertion that it was "entirely about slavery" without obliging myself to agree with whatever other irrelevant red herrings you simultaneously think somehow make it NOT ENTIRELY about slavery.

Here's a wee summary for those pretending not to get it:

The South started the war, because they feared (unjustly and incorrectly) that the North planned to outlaw, limit, or restrict, slavery. As the motivation of the people who fired the first shot was to preserve slavery, it would be reasonable to say that the war was all about (preseving) slavery.

The North prosecuted the war (that was forced upon them by slavery advocates), NOT because they opposed slavery, but because they wanted to preserve the Union. As nobody of any power, influence, or consequence on either side was motivated by a desire to end slavery, it would NOT be reasonable to say that the war was all about (ending) slavery.

Conflating the latter (unreasonable) claim with the former (reasonable) claim is either an admission that you lack the reasoning skills to be a competent contributor to the discussion; OR it is a pathetic and rule-breaking attempt to twist other posters' words to give the false and misleading impression that they agree with your evidently false position.

You don't strike me as being sufficiently stupid as to claim to have not deliberately violated the ToU here; It may be that you are ignorant of the rule you broke, but ignorance of the rules is not a defence.

 

[Lion IRC]

I'll come back to the thread once the TOU Lawyering fight club derail gets sorted out.

 

[bilby]

I'll come back to the thread once the TOU Lawyering fight club derail gets sorted out.

If you are permitted to do so.

 

[hyzer]

I would like to point out that the moment the war was over the North completely ignored the future of the former slaves, and the South went on abusing them never granting the former slaves any quarter. Very “Christian” of all of them. Honestly, Lion wants to die on this cross. Let this abortion of a tread die with him. I stand by my previous comment: the majority of the white self proclaimed Christians in the Red states today are raging bigots, they support the Southern cause (that other races are not equal), and deny that their war was about preserving that belief.

 

[pood]

It was not an “absolute statement.”

Yes, it was.
That's what the word "entirely" means.

I'm entitled to agree with your assertion that it was "entirely about slavery" without obliging myself to agree with whatever other irrelevant red herrings you simultaneously think somehow make it NOT ENTIRELY about slavery.

You know perfectly well that this is bullshit, since my “entirely” was about the point of view of the south and not the north. This is why you decapitated the quote. What is mystifying is why you think you could get away with such an obvious charade. My guess would be that you and your like-minded creationists are addicted to the practice of quote-mining and cherry-picking, which speaks volumes about how even you know, on some level, how vapid and unsupportable your arguments are.

I will say, though — and this has nothing to do with your blatant quote-mining — that “entirely” for the south ( entirely to preserve and extend slavery) and a very different “entirely” for the north (entirely to preserve the union) — is a bit too strong. No doubt there were SOME (not many people) in the north who initially joined the war effort because they hoped it would destroy slavery, and there likely were SOME people in the south who fought on behalf of the confederacy for reasons other than preserving and extending slavery. But they were a vanishingly small minority. Later on — as I have already said — AFTER the Emancipation Proclamation, there probably was a growing sentiment in the north not just to preserve the union, but to punish the south by destroying slavery. Everything is so much more complicated than your stupid black-and-white view of reality, you see. In any case, it is plain for all to see, in the point at question, that you mutilated my quote to change my meaning, and this is an underhanded and detestable tactic in violation of the rules as I read them. But that is for the mods to decide.

 

[Swammerdami]

I shall hijack this thread to ask an (interesting?) question about the proper construction of English prose.

Two things my post is NOT about are

(1) What the Civil War was about. The answer to this is well-known and already uttered by several thread participants. The South seceded to protect their institution of slavery. The North rejected the secession to preserve the Union. After a year and a half of horrendous casualties, the North adopted the cause of Emancipation to keep their morale up.

(2) Whether Mr. Lion intentionally took Mr. pood's sentence out of context. (If he did, he reminds us of two other posters, one of whom flaunts his spelling expertise whenever he has no better rejoinder to make, the other mindlessly rants about President Biden but is apparently unable to spell that surname. I think I'm not the only one who has NOT added those two to my Ignore list, simply because their sophomoric conceits often offer insights into Ilkish "cognition.")

The war was entirely about slavery ..

That's what I thought

Wow, what pathetic weaseling, repeating the rotten tactic you’ve used before of taking a quote out of contest ...

Without taking sides in this dispute, I have a basic question about English sentences! Are they expected to be self-contained?
FoxNews has taken Hillary Clinton's words out of context, but in the example I remember they quoted just one CLAUSE or even partial clause, a clause which was contradicted by the complete sentence. Misconstruction of a PARTIAL sentence is easy, particularly if conjunction ("If") or adverb ("Counterfactually") is omitted.

My question is: Should sentences be constructed so that they remain valid in isolation?
I honestly don't know the answer. I call on all Infidels to look for examples of complete sentences which have an unintended meaning when quoted in isolation.

In the example above, Lion actually truncated pood's complete sentence but I'm not sure that matters.

The war was entirely about slavery and had nothing to do with states’ rights vs. federal rights.

pood COULD (and should?) have written something like "The South's secession was entirely about slavery."

I wonder how often a complete but slightly careless sentence can be taken out of context as we saw here. Do I write such sentences? Examples, please!

 

[pood]

pood COULD (and should?) have written something like "The South's secession was entirely about slavery."

Sure, that would have perhaps been a mite clearer, but it’s not really that important, because I do not think that ANYONE dealing in good faith would fail to see that in that passage, I was discussing the South only. Context is everything, and it’s obvious that is precisely why Lion OMITTED the balance of the passage, so that he could falsely claim that I contradicted myself. It’s reprehensible behavior, no less so for being utterly transparent. He did the exact same thing to EricH in a different discussion.

 

[abaddon]

I wonder how often a complete but slightly careless sentence can be taken out of context as we saw here. Do I write such sentences? Examples, please!

A slightly careless sentence now and again is going to happen, even with excellent writers like you and pood. These are conversations not essays.

The reader/responder has a duty (to the 'debate opponent' and all other potential readers) to understand the other person's post as well as they can before critiquing it.

A responder should keep the gist of the overall message in mind. There are no single words or sentences that can be separated out of context and retain their meaning. If someone slices and dices another's post, each segment needs to keep the gist of the whole post in mind.

If there's a clarification needed, it's the responder who should ask for it.

If the convo's been ongoing then there's little excuse for singling out a word or phrase to pull a "gotcha!" when the person's stance is already known.

If the person clarifies, then a response to the effect "NO! I know what you meant and you meant something else!" is something the accuser must demonstrate with proofs, not assertions.

So all in all, I really don't think incomprehension on the reader's part is rightly blamed on the writer. Of course the aim is to write as well as one can, but after that's done the reader's job is to put in a good-faith effort to get the meaning right or just don't respond at all.

 

[steve_bank]

The mother of all derails, for sure.

However Lion's assertion that since most 19th century Christians did not own slaves they were not pro slavery has been soundly refuted.

 

[pood]

pood COULD (and should?) have written something like "The South's secession was entirely about slavery."

Note, too, that if I had written the above, Lion easily could have, and probably would have, just quoted “…entirely about slavery” in his crude little gotcha.

 

[Swammerdami]

The mother of all derails, for sure.

However Lion's assertion that since most 19th century Christians did not own slaves they were not pro slavery has been soundly refuted.

What was the high percentage of Southern families that did NOT own slaves? Even a single slave represented considerable wealth, so it's no surprise that George Washington was perhaps the wealthiest American of his time: -- "At the time of George Washington's death, the Mount Vernon enslaved population consisted of 317 people. Of the 317 enslaved people living at Mount Vernon in 1799, a little less than half (123 people) were owned by George Washington himself. Another 153 enslaved people were owned by the Custis estate."

What is the correct and cogent explanation of why non-slave-owning southern males liked slavery? Trickle-down economics? A psychological lift from knowing that one is not in the Lowest Caste?

 

[pood]

The mother of all derails, for sure.

However Lion's assertion that since most 19th century Christians did not own slaves they were not pro slavery has been soundly refuted.

What is the correct and cogent explanation of why non-slave-owning southern males liked slavery? Trickle-down economics? A psychological lift from knowing that one is not in the Lowest Caste?

You can read all about it here. Unsurprisingly, Christianity was behind it all This article just makes Lion’s arguments so dreadfully stupid.

 

[TomC]

What is the correct and cogent explanation of why non-slave-owning southern males liked slavery? Trickle-down economics? A psychological lift from knowing that one is not in the Lowest Caste?

I'm confident it's more accurate to say that not many people thought about it.

Industrial strength racism was the norm. Non-white people were thought of more as animal-human hybrids than persons. And slavery was just "how things are", as God ordained. Obviously, it was a huge benefit to those persons wealthy enough to own slaves. So protecting the institution was crucial to the monied elite. Much more so than the "marriage of convenience" that joined the northern and southern states, successfully getting rid of British rule. So, the Confederacy had little reason to remain in the Union when the threat of the British abated.
Tom

 

[pood]

Here’s an excerpt. We can see what Lion’s bible-thumpers really felt, at least down south. It was better up north, though at the time almost no one was in favor of what was called “Negro equality.”

The prominent South Carolina Presbyterian theologian James Henley Thornwell did not mince his words. “The parties in the conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders. They are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground – Christianity and Atheism the combatants; and the progress of humanity at stake.”


During the 1850’s, pro-slavery arguments from the pulpit became especially strident. A preacher in Richmond exalted slavery as “the most blessed and beautiful form of social government known; the only one that solves the problem, how rich and poor may dwell together; a beneficent patriarchate.” The Central Presbyterian affirmed that slavery was “a relation essential to the existence of civilized society.” By 1860, Southern preachers felt comfortable advising their parishioners that “both Christianity and Slavery are from heaven; both are blessings to humanity; both are to be perpetuated to the end of time.”


By 1860, Southern churches were denouncing the North as decadent and sinful because it had turned from God and rejected the Bible. Since the North was sinful and degenerate, went their reasoning, the South must purify itself by seceding. As a South Carolina preacher noted on the eve of secession, “We cannot coalesce with men whose society will eventually corrupt our own, and bring down upon us the awful doom which awaits them.” The consequence was a pointedly religious bent to rising Southern nationalism. As the Southern Presbyterian wrote, “It would be a glorious sight to see this Southern Confederacy of ours stepping forth amid the nations of the world animated with a Christian spirit, guided by Christian principles, administered by Christian men, and adhering faithfully to Christian precepts,” ie., the slavery of fellow human beings.