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> Look, all I can speak to is the quality of your engagement with me here. You misread a primary source which plainly states that slave labor was the precipitat

> Look, all I can speak to is the quality of your engagement with me here. You misread a primary source which plainly states that slave labor was the precipitating issue in the conflict over state's rights which blossomed into open rebellion and bloody war. I didn’t misread it, I read it correctly. Others put meaning into the slave debate, at the time this wasn’t as big as we make it today - it was propaganda and the rewriting of history that made it larger. Primary sources at the time definitely emphasize it, but there are a whole plethora of issues. Further, your coming at the discussion from your position in history today; projecting, if you will. At the start of the war and prior to it, there were decades of the north undermining the south. The fact there was a “fugitive slave act” was because of that undermining by the north. Regardless, what I was trying to convey was a more factual basis for a discussion. Even in this discussion, the judgement is thick. I try not to portray a judgment, rather focusing on factual statements. Though, to your point I think we mostly agree and I don’t think the civil war was avoidable. I just view it as a much larger conflict than slavery and I think that’s revisionist history to believe it was the primary cause. From the founding of this country there have been two waring factions — the federalist and the anti-federalist. Rural vs urban. Populist vs elitist. Democrat vs Republican. Effectively, “what is American”. It hasn’t changed, really. We’re still having the same debates, pro-life or pro-abortion. The idea behind a Republic is we can resolve those differences and allow greater regional freedom. We have mechanisms of government that enable no faction to dominate (though that’s being eroded). The original idea was states would also leave the union if they so chose - which clearly the northern states wouldn’t allow. Personally, my fear is that we’re sliding into another “hot” period of the civil war. When we can’t resolve differences AND can’t leave, then war is inevitable.

billjings 4y ago
> I didn’t misread it, I read it correctly. Others put meaning into the slave debate, at the time this wasn’t as big as we make it today - it was propaganda and the rewriting of history that made it larger. The first two paragraphs of South Carolina's articles of secession say, "We are seceding because our constitutional right to own slaves is being violated by northern states." The outcome of the slave issue had serious consequences for the propertied class in the South, too. Did you know that, apart from Southern slave owners, most slave owners of the era were paid for their slaves when they were freed? Even the citizens of Haiti, who earned their freedom through violent rebellion, were eventually forced to repay France for "stealing" themselves for their owners. It's not propaganda to point at the words of the slave states; it's propaganda to throw sand in the eyes of people seeking to understand what actually happened. I grew up in Mississippi; I saw the battlefield of Vicksburg as a child, I understand the need to relate to those folks. And I understand the feelings of injustice that well up when you and your community are reductively maligned as being nothing but outright racists, or when a statement like "The Civil War was fought over slavery" is then extrapolated to a statement as obviously untrue as "All southerners fought in the war so that they could preserve slavery." But southerners are full of self-justifying lies, too. > The fact there was a “fugitive slave act” was because of that undermining by the north. And what else was the North to do? Do you believe that slavery is immoral? If a runaway slave hitched a train into your state and knocked on your front door, would you send them back to bondage? This is why the legal question is a dodge: the moral question speaks too strongly. Read the passage I quoted from Grant again, top to bottom. He is as vivid on the question as any writer I have read. And he was there, and you and I were not.

billjings 4y ago

> I didn’t misread it, I read it correctly. Others put meaning into the slave debate, at the time this wasn’t as big as we make it today - it was propaganda and the rewriting of history that made it larger. The first two paragraphs of South Carolina's articles of secession say, "We are seceding because our constitutional right to own slaves is being violated by northern states." The outcome of the slave issue had serious consequences for the propertied class in the South, too. Did you know that, apart from Southern slave owners, most slave owners of the era were paid for their slaves when they were freed? Even the citizens of Haiti, who earned their freedom through violent rebellion, were eventually forced to repay France for "stealing" themselves for their owners. It's not propaganda to point at the words of the slave states; it's propaganda to throw sand in the eyes of people seeking to understand what actually happened. I grew up in Mississippi; I saw the battlefield of Vicksburg as a child, I understand the need to relate to those folks. And I understand the feelings of injustice that well up when you and your community are reductively maligned as being nothing but outright racists, or when a statement like "The Civil War was fought over slavery" is then extrapolated to a statement as obviously untrue as "All southerners fought in the war so that they could preserve slavery." But southerners are full of self-justifying lies, too. > The fact there was a “fugitive slave act” was because of that undermining by the north. And what else was the North to do? Do you believe that slavery is immoral? If a runaway slave hitched a train into your state and knocked on your front door, would you send them back to bondage? This is why the legal question is a dodge: the moral question speaks too strongly. Read the passage I quoted from Grant again, top to bottom. He is as vivid on the question as any writer I have read. And he was there, and you and I were not.