Were Confederates mainly fighting to maintain slavery?

[faded_Glory]

Pretty much everybody in those times was white supremacist

Uh... only if they were white.

True that is.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Are there public statues in Germany commemorating Nazis?

Or the US?

 

[Horatio Parker]

The war was about State rights, specifically the right for new territories to be slave states. So yes, the Confederates were pro-slavery. So were many in the Union. Mr. Lincoln was no abolitionist and he had to fight hard to get support for his Emancipation Declaration, which for him was mainly a means to undermine the Confederacy in his fight to preserve the Union. Ending slavery was by no means meant to create equality between whites and blacks. Pretty much everybody in those times was white supremacist, including Mr. Lincoln himself. He proposed to send the ex-slaves back to Africa because he didn't want a mixed society.

Those were very different times.

Frederick Douglass helped change Lincolns mind on repatriation. The thing was, no one considered what AAs themselves wanted, and what they wanted was to live in the US as Americans with full rights. Once Lincoln understood this, he accepted it.

But it's true that Lincoln and many others, up to a point, would've gladly accepted a Confederate return to the Union with slavery intact. McClellan was considered a traitor by many for a seeming reluctance to push for a military solution. But the Confederacy didn't propose reunification until early 1865, and by then it was too late.

 

[Horatio Parker]

At their 1919 reunion the United Confederate Veterans “resolved to inaugurate a movement to disseminate the truths of Confederate history.” To carry out this aim, they comissioned Miss Rutherford, Historian for the United Daughters of the Confederacy to prepare “A Measuring Rod to Test Text Books and Reference Books in Schools, Colleges and Libraries” to be used by textbook committees of boards of education, private schools and libraries to ensure “absolute fairness” “truth in history” and “full justice to the South.”

The "truths"?

I. The Constitution of the United States, 1787, Was a Compact between Sovereign States and Was not Perpetual nor National 6

II. Secession Was not Rebellion 7

III. The North Was Responsible for the War between the States 8

IV. The War between the States Was not Fought to Hold the Slaves 9

V. The Slaves Were Not Ill-Treated in the South and the North Was largely Responsible for their Presence in the South 10

VI. Coercion Was not Constitutional 11

VII. The Federal Government Was Responsible for the Andersonville Horrors 12

VIII. The Republican Party that Elected Abraham Lincoln Was not Friendly to the South 13

IX. The South Desired Peace and Made every Effort to Obtain it 14, 15, 16

X. The Policy of the Northern Army Was to Destroy Property—the Southern Army to Protect it 18-21

XI. The South Has never Had its Rightful Place in Literature 22-23

http://angrybearblog.com/2017/08/slavery-heritage-and-southern-fried-free-speech.html

The complete measuring rod is here

https://archive.org/details/measuringrodtot00ruth

 

[Keith&Co.]

Read an account of someone who used the Underground Railroad to smuggle Slaves and Union Prisoners over the border during the war.
Soldiers stationed near her house telling her that 'Lincoln wants to come down here and free our niggers, ma'am, but we won't let him.'
Thus the term The States-Rights States for the confederacy.

I read in a few places that Lincoln was against slavery as an institution, but it was in the Constitution, so he just couldn't figure out HOW to go about it.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Actual confederates had no problem with saying they were fighting the war to keep slavery and to protect white supremacy.

If they didn't have a problem then, why so do many people have a problem now?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Actual confederates had no problem with saying they were fighting the war to keep slavery and to protect white supremacy.

If they didn't have a problem then, why so do many people have a problem now?

It's them there P'litical C'rectness PO-leece.
You get in trouble if you say you want to preserve or bring back the slavery, so the war hadda be a more noble war. For good, noble reasons, like state's rights and an untaintified unnerstanding of the Const'ution, and all that there.

 

[Bronzeage]

Okay, just for the record, the Civil War was about slavery. It was also about a State's right to have slaves. It was also about tariffs which would make owning slaves an unprofitable venture. It was also about the buying and selling of slaves, which was a very profitable business for the states which had the greatest interest in succeeding. Everything else is horseshit.

The problem we face to day is a simple one. Through the ages, many people from philosophers to Biblical writers have expressed the idea, "No man is evil in his own eyes." Even the sociopath serial killer believes his victims have infringed upon him in some way, if only for representing the women who shunned him. So, the problem becomes, what to do when good men do evil things. This is especially difficult when the evil is not generally recognized, or even widely approved. We may remember a passage from Huckleberry Finn, where Huck ponders the evil of helping a slave escape from his legal master. If you don't recall, Huck decides he will not betray the runaway Jim, and if he faces eternal damnation in Hell for his sin, that's just the way it has to be.

Times change and shit happens. Some of the shit that happens is good people try to bring consistency and constancy to their lives. If you go around saying, "All men are created equal," sooner of later, it occurs that you can't exclude some men(or women) from the equality club. That's an awkward situation. Here we are, being all free and equal, and then we have to sit down beside someone who used to work for nothing more than room and board, and suffered corporal punishment for any infraction, because the one thing you couldn't do to him was fire him.

The true course of a good man or woman, who knows that a particular evil was once common, but is now strictly out of limits, is to acknowledge that it happened, and it was bad. Claiming it was something in the past and therefore no one alive today is responsible, is the coward's path. We are all constituents of the whole, and while we may not be called to atone for for the sins of our ancestors, we must own up to them.

The statues in question were not erected to honor dead heroes. They were erected to attempt to perpetuate the old system. That's the plain simple truth. Since no man or woman is evil in their own eyes, we have to the maintain this farce of honor and heritage, in order to not appear hypocritical in our own eyes. The time has come for the statues to come down. They no longer serve the purpose for which they were intended.

 

[BH]

https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?9717-I-m-irrationally-offended-about-my-ancestors


The above is a thread I started about how I have to fight these irrational ideas that pop up in my head about the Confederacy and living in the South. I had ancestors fight in the Confederate Army and could not understand why I get aggravated a little when people attack it. There is no rational reason why I should---I admit what the Confederacy stood for was wrong, and lots of people scientifically educated knew that the claim of white supremacy was wrong even back in those days. The war was primarily over slavery and slavery related issues and white supremacy. I do not want to beat a dead horse but if you look at all the secession declarations from each southern legislature they state it loud and clear.

There were good reasons offered for why I had such feelings that seemed to make sense. Maybe these reason apply to many of the pro-Confederate monument people today.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?9717-I-m-irrationally-offended-about-my-ancestors


The above is a thread I started about how I have to fight these irrational ideas that pop up in my head about the Confederacy and living in the South. I had ancestors fight in the Confederate Army and could not understand why I get aggravated a little when people attack it. There is no rational reason why I should---I admit what the Confederacy stood for was wrong, and lots of people scientifically educated knew that the claim of white supremacy was wrong even back in those days. The war was primarily over slavery and slavery related issues and white supremacy. I do not want to beat a dead horse but if you look at all the secession declarations from each southern legislature they state it loud and clear.

There were good reasons offered for why I had such feelings that seemed to make sense. Maybe these reason apply to many of the pro-Confederate monument people today.

Even before those legislatures met if you go back to more municipal gatherings you discover that slavery was the main issue. And it was not just slavery but fear of freeing the slaves.

 

[BH]

Sometimes I honestly think the United States was a mistake from the very beginning.

 

[whichphilosophy]

This seems to be a good case to consider their removal if the local governments wish to debate this. The only question is why all of a sudden there is concern 97 years later. Also it would be erroneous to destroy them rather than move them.

Who said it was sudden? There have been proposals to remove these things for years, particularly since one would have to be dense not to realize the meaning of a Confederate soldier, or a General, sitting directly outside of a courthouse or town hall (which is where many of these were located). Even in Bmore, whee they're mostly located nowhere near either, it had been hotly debated for years, passed a while back - and then sat on. These pseudo-nazis in Virginia managed to speed things up, and eventually...well, as I said, the city was given a choice to lose the Jackson-Lee statue one way, or the other, and so they chose the one way.

There's nothing wrong with people campaigning to remove these over the years but why all of a sudden is there commotion. It's something to be resolved in the US. These also represent history but there is a stronger argument to remove those which I understand were erected in the 1920's but that's still a long time ago.

However if they were debated in Baltimore but nothing was done, then than that is a stronger argument for these be removed.

Personally I don't have a view because this is something that should be dealt with internally in the USA. They do represent history and as fine pieces of work could be in some cases sent to Museums. This is something to finalize locally.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Actual confederates had no problem with saying they were fighting the war to keep slavery and to protect white supremacy.

If they didn't have a problem then, why so do many people have a problem now?

 

[whichphilosophy]

This seems to be a good case to consider their removal if the local governments wish to debate this. The only question is why all of a sudden there is concern 97 years later. Also it would be erroneous to destroy them rather than move them.

Who said it was sudden? There have been proposals to remove these things for years, particularly since one would have to be dense not to realize the meaning of a Confederate soldier, or a General, sitting directly outside of a courthouse or town hall (which is where many of these were located). Even in Bmore, whee they're mostly located nowhere near either, it had been hotly debated for years, passed a while back - and then sat on. These pseudo-nazis in Virginia managed to speed things up, and eventually...well, as I said, the city was given a choice to lose the Jackson-Lee statue one way, or the other, and so they chose the one way.

This is up to USA local governments of course. Both sides sustained high casualties. Whether this should be of historic interest or something else would be up to the legislatures of local US States unless federal laws override them.

Should these be destroyed or moved to a historic setting. What is your view?

- - - Updated - - -

Sometimes I honestly think the United States was a mistake from the very beginning.

I'm sure many American Indians will agree with you. There's a lot of good about it as well.

 

[DBT]

Statues from that period should have been put into Museums long ago.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Are there public statues in Germany commemorating Nazis?

There are for fallen German soldiers but not to suggest they commemorate the Nazis. However they could be viewed somewhat extremely that they do. A Marxist or a Zionist would possibly think anything relating to war would. Another person could perceive this reflects on a senseless war.

 

[Horatio Parker]

The Confederates won with the pen (and the noose) what they could not win on the battlefield: the cause of white supremacy and the dominant understanding of what the war was all about. We are still digging ourselves out from under the misinformation they spread, which has manifested in our public monuments and our history books.

Take Kentucky, where the legislature voted not to secede. Early in the war, Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston ventured through the western part of the state and found “no enthusiasm, as we imagined and hoped, but hostility.” Eventually, 90,000 Kentuckians would fight for the United States, while 35,000 fought for the Confederate States. Nevertheless, according to historian Thomas Clark, the state now has 72 Confederate monuments and only two Union ones.

Maryland, which did not secede, sent 24,000 men to the Confederate armed forces, but it also sent 63,000 to the U.S. Army and Navy. Still, the UDC’s monument tells visitors to take the other side: “To our heroes of Montgomery Co. Maryland: That we through life may not forget to love the thin gray line.”

In fact, the thin gray line came through Montgomery and adjoining Frederick counties at least three times, en route to Antietam, Gettysburg, and Washington. Robert E. Lee’s army expected to find recruits and help with food, clothing, and information. It didn’t. Instead, Maryland residents greeted Union soldiers as liberators when they came through on the way to Antietam. Recognizing the residents of Frederick as hostile, Confederate cavalry leader Jubal Early ransomed $200,000 from them lest he burn their town, a sum equal to about $3 million today. But Frederick now boasts a Confederate memorial, and the manager of the town’s cemetery—filled with Union and Confederate dead—told me, “Very little is done on the Union side” around Memorial Day. “It’s mostly Confederate.”

Perhaps most perniciously, neo-Confederates now claim that the South seceded over states’ rights. Yet when each state left the Union, its leaders made clear that they were seceding because they were for slavery and against states’ rights. In its “Declaration of the Causes Which Impel the State of Texas to Secede From the Federal Union,” for example, the secession convention of Texas listed the states that had offended the delegates: “Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa.” Governments there had exercised states’ rights by passing laws that interfered with the federal government’s attempts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Some no longer let slave owners “transit” across their territory with slaves. “States’ rights” were what Texas was seceding against. Texas also made clear what it was seceding for—white supremacy:

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

https://zinnedproject.org/materials/myths-about-confederacy/

 

[BH]

No matter how much you point it out the pro-confederate sympathizers will not listen. It is like the creationists, no matter how many observed instances of evolution scientists have cited as observed and no matter how you show that animals changed gradually over time through the fossil record they will not listen. And when you cite how the dating methods all agree using different elements and that if these are wrong then you are basically saying the laws of chemistry have to be wrong it is still to no avail.

I think a lot of people are just filled with shame and their narcissisism will not let them acknowledge that fact.

There is a qoute I read once that goes like this "Learn from the past to live a more righteous life in the future". All peoples and nations have things in the past that they would be ashamed of now. The European kings had their right of the first night, religious wars, and other things. You do not see it today. The Europeans for the most part aknowledge such took place, it was wrong, and never again. No more Holocausts either.

We should do the same in the US South. The Confederacy stood for things that were wrong. That was our ancestors bad. We do not have to be like our ancestors.

 

[Horatio Parker]

No matter how much you point it out the pro-confederate sympathizers will not listen. It is like the creationists, no matter how many observed instances of evolution scientists have cited as observed and no matter how you show that animals changed gradually over time through the fossil record they will not listen. And when you cite how the dating methods all agree using different elements and that if these are wrong then you are basically saying the laws of chemistry have to be wrong it is still to no avail.

I think a lot of people are just filled with shame and their narcissisism will not let them acknowledge that fact.

There is a qoute I read once that goes like this "Learn from the past to live a more righteous life in the future". All peoples and nations have things in the past that they would be ashamed of now. The European kings had their right of the first night, religious wars, and other things. You do not see it today. The Europeans for the most part aknowledge such took place, it was wrong, and never again. No more Holocausts either.

We should do the same in the US South. The Confederacy stood for things that were wrong. That was our ancestors bad. We do not have to be like our ancestors.

It's not much fun being on the wrong side of history. It's understandable that people resist.

But it'll be easier for the generation coming up.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Statues from that period should have been put into Museums long ago.

Yup, that's what we should do with them, put them in a Jim Crow museum.