I wonder if the history taught in schools was more accurate/correct/true to what was actually happened if all this stuff would even be an issue now. by all accounts slavery was on it's way out anyways whether the war happened or no. hell sherman thought slavery would go on for another 10 years whether the union won or not. an article in the confederate constitution (who knows if it was enforced) it was a step in the direction to ending slavery.
The south relied WAY to heavily on an agriculture based economy to last very long with the aristocratic culture they had. It would have collapsed in short order.
Except that most history books have the war wrong so wrong. But yeah. It shouldnt be on any governments property. At least not the way it is there.
Reminds me of the infamous 'Maginot Line Circumvention' fallacy. Yea, sure 'they forgot to complete their defenses'... sigh. It's ridiculous that a lot of history teachers and even historians have this fallacy. I mean, is it too much to look at some sources that depict how it went? No, instead rely on some anecdotal footnote that has become a mythic legend. At least that shit supports another great fallacy whereby all past people are depicted as simpletons.
a·poc·ry·phal əˈpäkrəfəl/ adjective (of a story or statement) of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true. "an apocryphal story about a former president" synonyms:fictitious, made-up, untrue, fabricated, false, spurious; More of or belonging to the Apocrypha. adjective: Apocryphal "the Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas"
On An unrelated note, Apple caved apparently and has at least restored ultimate general to its appstore
It's an interesting thought that slavery was on the downward spiral, and I do believe that maybe twenty to thirty years down the line they might have ended it. It's a superfluous argument that has been used by many people to label the Union as the aggressors and try and claim that the war wasn't about slavery. It ranks up there with claiming Sherman's March to the sea was the worst atrocity in us history.... considering that both times that the confederate army entered the Union they burned down my home city... and also burned down others kinda sours your view on the "righteousness" of the cause. Buuut that's the way it was taught in my school... at least verbatim out of the text book. Literally tries glossing over the slavery and claimed states rights while vilifying the Union for Sherman and reconstruction. So yea that could be part of it.
it's never as simple as one thing, it may have been sparked by the drive to abolish slavery, but that was still years away from enactment (under the existing plan) until the war accelerated things. Hell, a conspiracy theorist might postulate that the north pushed the south to secede in order to expedite the matter, but even if it were still current events it would be damn difficult to get an accurate idea of the true causes of the war.
Only the leaders know the causes. Then they write down whatever they want them to be remembered for. It is hard to accept that Confederation was going to simply give up slavery just like that in a couple of decades or so. It would have been not just a massive social reform but also a huge economic burden on them, especially to the 'aristocracy', among which many if not easily the most had various ideological views justifying slavery (not limited to just US but various forms of social darwinism, racism etc. existed in pretty much all the slaver societies ever). For instance it was no simple thing to ban slavery in the British Empire and even there it was not as fundamental part of their quite industrialized society as it was for the highly agrarian Confederation. Looking at how hard it is to get something like global warming or dangers of tobacco accepted generally due to machinations of some capitalists who are personally heavily invested in benefiting from carbon economy and tobacco industry and the issue with dangers of led in the 60's or 70's... No, I cannot see that the issue of slavery was going to be automatically resolved. It was globally a disappearing thing but then again history knows a ton of examples of 'last enclaves of whatever'. For instance samurai still practicing 16th century martial arts in mid 19th century, Russia clinging on to serfdom until very late 19th century etc. Even with global trends those trend changes still need to get passed country by country and sometimes regardless of things going for the change the conservative (old school, old ways) can beat change back. Just look at Bush II's speech on how US "cannot afford to fight global warming.. and can't really understand how anyone else could" or something along those lines. I would think that slavery would not be abolished on it's on in Confederation without there being some serious uprisings and incidents. On the other hand if Union supported those rebellions it would be casus belli for Confederation and then there might've been a war that was actually started because of intervention with Confederation's internal policy of slavery. Or there could be a "no, we won't help you because we can't but if you make it here then it's another thing" kind of approach.
Only 30 percent of familys in the south owned slaves. Of that 70 percent they were working the fields right along the slaves. Its crazy when the war was over slavery while at the same not. The not being the actual institution. Ulysses S Grant actually said that if the goal of the union ever became something other then restoring the union he would resign and join the confederate army. Though i dont think he could have by the time the union did start fighting to end slavery in the last year or 2.
I didn't suggest that it would be easy, just that it was inevitable, it wasn't just the union north pressuring for an end to slavery but the global climate as a whole, and whether the southern states caved or resisted the change was only going to determine whether it took more, or less, time to come to pass. What the confederates failed to realize, is that even if they broke free from the union they were going to have to fight an uphill battle for the rest of their existence against ever increasing pressure to maintain their status quo, even if the US said screw it, do what you want, the rest of the world would eventually pressure for abolition, and the south would have one hell of a time resisting when noone will trade with them. the south rebelled because the north was pushing harder and harder to abolish slavery, utilizing taxes and other means to try and demean the ability of those clinging to such things in order to force those who refused to accept that things needed to change, the -war- on the other hand, was fought to maintain the union, the abolition of slavery as a result of said war was partly a tactic to weaken the south, encouraging slaves to flee to the north reinforcing troop numbers and weakening the south's ability to feed theirs at the same time. It's kinda ironic when you think about it though, we broke from the Brits for reasons not much different, if you ignore the moral and ethical differences involved because of the subject, the union really didn't have much ground on which to stand in retaining the union against the 'will of the confederate people' just one of those historical ironies.
the union government wasn't calling for the end of slavery. actually they didn't even know how to do it legally. citizens were of course calling were calling for but I think most (at the beginning) didn't have strong feelings one way or the other. The emancipation proclamation did free slaves but didn't end slavery and I bet they could have had slaves in the south after. there simply was no law abolishing slavery lincoln had the emancipation all written and ready to go a full year before he issued it. yeah the whole thing is shitty. what annoys me the most about the flag is all the kneejerk of "oh we must rename or remove all this southern peoples names from stuff because they owned slaves" lake wanting to rename lake calhoun in minnesota because he owned slaves. he was a vice president. yet you hear nothing of doing the same thing for any union people who were slave owners. alot of the union generals had slaves and did not want to do away with slavery. still unclear whether sherman owned slaves or not but he wasn't opposed to slavery. george thomas (one of the better union generals) did own slaves. nothings happening with stuff named after him. same with grant and andrew johnson. though johnson is considred one of the worst presidents ever so maybe it balances out?
Didn't slavery exist for like 80 years under the US flag? Shouldn't it be considered offensive aswell? Maybe we could ban all flags. Except the rainbow flag. Rainbows never killed or oppressed anyone.
this site does a pretty good job of summing up events prior to and subsequent to the war until the 13th ammendment. my personal opinion on the subject is, banning/changing/altering things because of the history they represent is effectively tantamount to begging it to repeat itself, we need reminders from history, things that give a rise simply by being mentioned, to keep ourselves from following the footsteps of those whose decisions have created the monsters of our history.
Its also hypocritical to donly to one side (only confederate stuff removing atatues chaning names) because they owned slaves and not doing it for the union. I think at least half the union generals owned slaves. And were pro slavery. Or at least anti equal rights. Anti slavery not equal to equal rights. I would say most of the abolitionists were anti slavery but still thought african americans were not equal. As in no voting no being on jury no public office. They were equal only in ability to better their lives. That was lincolns personal view. I think most at the time felt the same way. Anti slavery people i mean.
yes it's hypocritical. They say hindsight is 20/20 but in the case of history I think it's nowhere near that accurate, the farther back you look the more distorted everything gets around focal points. The biggest problem though, is these people are judging history based on modern opinion's of what is right and wrong without considering the fact that people simply didn't -think- the same way at the time. We know all sorts of dirt about historical figures that, by a modern outlook is abhorrent, but at the time often wouldn't even have raised an eyebrow, or in some cases (such as abolitionists) would have raised eyebrows for quite the opposite reasons. Being an abolitionist at the time of these events was akin to claiming that the earth wasn't the center of the solar system during the time of Galileo. It challenged people's understanding of the world in a way that was not simply academic, but even spiritually, for if it was accepted then it was only a few small steps from admitting that all those things relegated to 'okay because...' were actually not okay at all, and those who committed them were effectively damned by what they knew of things. If someone came back in time from the future, and proved to you that beyond a shadow of a doubt that chickens were in fact sentient creatures and that we were really murdering them to eat them, well even with empirical evidence, it'd be damn difficult to convince even just a few people that chickens should be saved (this is just an example, I have very little fear this might turn out to be true, regardless of similarities that can be drawn between the average human and the average chicken's intellect.) but to that guy from the future, we might as well be eating each other every time we pick up a chicken sandwich. I'm not saying we shouldn't judge the past of course, but that we shouldn't villainize people who quite frequently were just doing the same thing the vast majority does today, keeping their heads down and going with the flow.
