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Okay but black people were freed from chattel slavery. It's true that it was followed closely by jim crow south, but given an option between the 2, none of us a

• shadowgovt 1y ago
  No, of course not. My point is that the South started a war because they believed they were so right that the only recourse was political violence. Their reward for it was to lose everything they feared they were going to lose... And more. Americans have this unfortunate tendency towards exceptionalist self-image. They remember the Revolutionary War and forget the Civil War. They remember World War 2 and forget Vietnam. They believe when they wield violence it is because they are right and the cause is just, when history shows that, even for them, the victor in such conflicts tends to have very little to do with just cause and a lot more to do with dumb luck (or, if I'm being a bit more generous, "material and strategic reality divorced from the justness of the casus belli").
  • gretch 1y ago
    Ah I see, you're saying it was a bad decision for the South to start the war. I agree history records fort sumter as the official start of the war, but I guess I was looking at it big picture that "a war was on it's way" regardless of the singular event that sparked full war. My perspective on the civil war is "good thing it happened and the Union won, otherwise who knows how long black people would have been enslaved". It would have been nice to end slavery without the war, but Lincoln tried to negotiate to this end extensively and couldn't secure it. Also, yes I agree the vietnam war is severely undertaught. And in the modern era, Afghanistan.
    • tracker1 1y ago
      I mostly agree, though I think slavery likely would have ended with industrialization anyway, a few decades later. It's also worth noting that most people don't realize there are more black people enslaved today than in the US Civil War, not to mention other enslaved groups.
  • tracker1 1y ago
    Depends on how you feel about a foreign occupied military outpost in your state/country that you've broken ties with. This isn't in support of the reasons the ties were broken, but I can absolutely see if say Germany leaves the EU, then they'd probably want an EU military occupied base in Germany to leave said base.
• s1artibartfast 1y ago
  Yet most countries were able to eliminate slavery without a war killing a significant portion of their citizens.
  • gretch 1y ago
    Yes, congrats to them and all of the freed slaves. We could not do that, but we did the next best thing.
    • shadowgovt 1y ago
      There's actually a case to be made that black Americans would have been freed sooner if the Colonies had never won the Revolutionary War, since Britain ended up outlawing slavery before the US did. (... but that's historical fiction speculation; there's also a case to be made that but for the pressure put upon Britain by the colonies slipping through her fingers, she'd have insufficient pressure put upon her to outlaw it... Especially if she had one of her largest colonies declaring loudly that a full have of its economy necessitated the practice).
    • s1artibartfast 1y ago
      Why do you think it was impossible? Do you apply that to every historically event? that there was no possible alternative?
      • shadowgovt 1y ago
        It was impossible because one side of the national debate got tired of talking and started shooting, sadly. Once that happened, it really wasn't up to Congress or the President any longer. The capture of Fort Sumter and declaration of succession moved the conversation from "How much slavery can America tolerate" to "this insurgent government has stolen half of the country's territory." The response to that threat was as self-evident as it would have been if that territory had been taken by another existing nation.
        • s1artibartfast 1y ago