There’s a joke I’ve heard, “In middle school, you learn the Civil War was about slavery. In high school, you learn it was about states rights. In college, you learn it was really about slavery”.
Alternative form:
To join the Confederacy the state had to enshrine slavery in it’s constitution. It was actually giving up the right to choose.
It was slavery or union.
The South went out of it’s way to make the war about slavery.
God, I’m so glad that states’ rights and tariffs only got a passing mention when I was in high school as part of the lead-up to the Civil War. I hope that old canard is dying.
I give it two years, tops, before some states start ban teachers from saying that the civil war was because of slavery. And because the DoE will be dismantled there’s nothing stopping them from doing just that
As a non american I’m curious about these events. I see it as a fact the war ended slavery, but isn’t anyone bothered about the winning heroes having used slaves themselves their whole life up until then? More than heroes I see them as ‘‘I’m not bad anymore’’ and demonizing their foes as a very hipocrite act.
If I was dealing drugs my whole life I wouldn’t raise my voice too high to condemn other dealers just because I recently quit myself, although seems like for some works pretty well.
Many states has abolished slavery decades prior. It was highly debated at the formation of the country. It gets weirder that Thomas Jefferson was anti slavery while owning 600 slaves and as president, he abolitioned the international slave trade and advocated to end slavery all togather, but was against voluntary manumission. People are… complicated, often self serving but can recognize how the system is horrible…
If you do something bad, and then you stop doing something bad, it’s not hypocritical to tell others to stop doing the bad thing. It’s hypocritical to not stop, and then tell others to stop.
We agree on that ethically it is right to ask others to stop doing wrong like you did. For me it’s different though asking while pointing with a gun. That is hypocrite.
If someone is doing something really bad to you, and someone else came over with a gun to stop them, would you stop the person saving you and purity-check them first?
Slavery was also much less prevalent in the North, and abolished completely ~55 years before the civil war. It’s not really equivalent. To borrow your drug dealing analogy (though it’s a loose one at best), it’s kind of like your local weed dealer helping to remove an unabashed fentanyl dealer from the community
Ofc I would let him save me first. It’s what happens after being liberated that concerned me. Before calling him a slave liberator I would definitely make that backgroud check. If i was to find he once dismissed his own slaves without proper compensation based in human rights and equality, then my next moral task would be to prosecute him.
I mean, please correct my lack of american history knowledge if necessary, but the way I see it is really easy to dismiss slave labour only once you get the industrial machinery.
