25 Percent Of Americans Open To Secession

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^^^
QFT.

Even if any of that is true, the fact remains, a Union victory ended slavery, the most wretchedly evil institution in America. That alone makes the Union cause right.

Even if any of that is true, the fact remains, a Union victory ended slavery, the most wretchedly evil institution in America. That alone makes the Union cause right.

/\ Freeing the slaves was a byproduct of a larger objective .

Freeing the slave was just.
Union war crimes such as the burning and looting of civilian homes was not.

I wouldn't be bothered if Colorado was its own country...not that everything government wise is 'great' here but at least then the federal government wouldn't also be causing problems for the state.

Theoretically though, that wasn't the only way to have ended slavery...perhaps it would have started dying off on its own due to people seeing how injust and sick it is, and maybe even the slaves would have started rebelling and organizing to do so, no one can say for sure. The bit of slavery being ended is one thing I think is good that came of the civil war....however maybe the only thing...so I just cannot entirely see the Union cause as being right since some of the 'cause' was things I find i disagree with. I mean I also do not think because dropping nukes on Japanese cities supposedly ended ww2 that it was 'right' or just per say...so cannot say the civil war was just or 'right' because it ended slavery.

Last edited by Sweetleaf on 20 Sep 2014, 12:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Indeed. U.S. President Lincoln's opinions http://www.history.com/news/5-things-yo ... ancipation show him to have cared not a whit about slavery or black Americans generally. His Emancipation Proclamation was a military and political scheme, however welcome and commonsensible it was to abolitionists. In fact, Lincoln first publicly advocated for colonization of Liberia in 1852 and, in 1854, said that his first instinct would be "to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia" instead of simply letting them live in the United States where they and their families were born.

Remember that the draft copy of the Declaration of Independence that was considered by the Continental Congress and written by Thomas Jefferson included the idea of ending slavery. The southern colonies refused to adopt such a document, so the offending idea was emended. From the importation of the first slave to America, it seems, much of the population and its leaders disagreed with slavery, while its institution and regional economics required them to accommodate it, too. Before slavery was abolished federally, 19 "free states" ultimately abolished slavery on their own, after Christians (among others) played a major role http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightat ... sh-slavery in the abolitionist movement.

But, the United States wasn't the last nation on Earth to prohibit slavery. Since its prohibition in 1863, several nations including Portugal, Brazil, Cuba, Korea, Ethiopia, China, Nepal, Thailand, Morocco, Afghanistan, Iraq and some British and French colonies had joined the abolition movement. The African nation of Niger, notably, abolished slavery as late as 2003. So, while it took a little over 87 years for the United States to abolish slavery, it was hardly dragged kicking and screaming as the final nation to do so.

People in the north had more pressing things to occupy their minds than slavery in the southern states. For them, going to war was driven by the desire to preserve the union. As far as sending freed blacks back to Africa, my first impulse would be to support it since as a people they were brought here against tier will. However I would wan to leave the decision of whether to stay or go each individual or family. On the other hand, my gut feeling is that there would have been unfair coercion to stay or go depending on who's doing the coercing. The rich southerners would want them to remain in-country at least as a source of cheap labor but most of the poor white southerners would most likely simply want them gone. Either way it would be unlikely that there was much of an actual choice for the freed blacks and that would have been unfair.


The pragmatist in Jefferson caused him to warm to the idea of slavery as time went by. His chosen lifestyle in that time and place would not have been possible otherwise.


Being, in effect, the world's role model we get beat up for it more, though....

I'm open to secession. Anything to get away from this crappy government we have now.

What's so crappy about it?

/\
Probably very little crappy about it in the eyes of those who are on the dole......

Theoretically other means could have been used. But why should anyone have to wait for an institution like slavery to die out in order to be free? Just think how long that would take - and slavery was believed in by slave states, who after all had been willing to die and kill to defend it. As for a slave rebellion - that sort of thing had happened in the past, and had been brutally put down. When it was successful, as in Haiti, there was an absolute bloodbath when the slaves took revenge for the years of degradation and oppression. Which begs the question, would American slaves have behaved any better, considering their justified pent up rage? As for the actions of the victors during the war - I believe it was Sherman who had said something to the extent of, "War should be so terrible so that we may never love it." So yeah, there doubtlessly were preferable ways to end slavery, but the military failure of session is what had brought it about, and that's the only reality we have.

But in the end, it was still right.

Well, if big business was held to accountability in regard to staying on American shores, and paying decent wages with benefits, there wouldn't have to be many people on "the dole."
I've found that the same people who b*tch about the public safety net also don't believe in civil rights for people of color or the LGBT community. Hardly the sort of people who decent people would want to be associated with.

Slavery was just replaced by the practice of convict labor lease. Guess what; most of the convicts caught in that sorry mess were black. Guess what else; arrest and convictions of blacks were way up in order to feed the convict labor pool. Guess what else; the plantations that "rented" them didnt feel compelled to treat them was well since the laborers did not belong to them. Add on top of that about a century of enforced segregation and all the sudden the freeing of the slaves was not the great liberation you make it out to be. It was a sh***y situation all around for them so why not just call it like it was. The biggest difference for them in the post-Civil War era was that they could (if they weren't in prison) leave the south but most couldn't afford to.