Pelosi wants Confederate statues removed from Capitol

[CBradSmith]

Relax, it's not absurd. It's what I was taught in college when studying the antebellum south.

Sys, it IS absurd to think that the poors are wanting to go fight wars so that they can say their shit stinks a little less than someone else.

Think that through.

 

[SMemmett]

That's an odd statement. Can you defend it?

In what quantities did the 95% non-slaveholders fight to "protect the institution of slavery" so that they wouldn't be at the bottom of the social ladder?

On the surface, your statement comes across completely absurd and made-up. No grounded logic in it.

Much more plausible is that since you are asserting on behalf of poors, that it was a paycheck or the promise of one.

Poor whites would have to compete with suddenly free blacks for jobs, likely lowering ther wages. That's absurd logic? Am I saying they fought solely just to protect slavery? No, but how many poor whites in the south would have been in favor of emancipation in 1861?

Read "What They Fought For" by McPherson if you want. Full of letters written by both American and CSA soldiers detailing the myriad of reasons men fought.

 

[anon_xl72qcu5isp39]

Poor whites would have to compete with suddenly free blacks for jobs, likely lowering ther wages. That's absurd logic? Am I saying they fought solely just to protect slavery? No, but how many poor whites in the south would have been in favor of emancipation in 1861?

Read "What They Fought For" by McPherson if you want. Full of letters written by both American and CSA soldiers detailing the myriad of reasons men fought.

It is insane to me when you look with hindsight at the principles and emotions that men killed and died for. That whole "Southern Honor" and "Way of life" stuff seems like a gratuitous suicidal impulse in hindsight. Defend that?

 

[SMemmett]

@CBradSmith care to respond? Do you still think my statement is absurd and/or fabricated?

 

[CBradSmith]

@CBradSmith care to respond? Do you still think my statement is absurd and/or fabricated?

Your response changed what you were saying. I give you the benefit of the doubt that your folllow up text is a better representation of what you were attempting to express. I take no issue with your follow up.

 

[ThorOdinson13]

It seems that some posters view it as an "either/or" proposition: Either Lincoln's motivation was to keep the Union intact, or slavery was the driving force behind the war. Why not both?

I hesitate to ask. Thor, why all the Abe-hate?

I apologize, just saw this today. I had kind of checked out, lost interest.

I agree it's both.

I hate Lincoln because I view him as a tyrant due to his actions before and during the war. And to give him credit, I also think had he not been assassinated the reconstruction would have been handled a lot better. I do believe that seeing all the dead affected him. I also believe he thought the war would end quickly.

The south tried and tried to leave peacefully and he would not allow those negotiations to occur. I fall on the side that secession was a constitutional right and should be to this day.

Now, you may think my theory to be way off base here but had he allowed them to leave peacefully the confederacy would have been forced into abolishing slavery via economics. Both France and Britain were refusing to acknowledge their sovereignty and refusing to trade because of it.

It's really as simple as I believe that we could have abolished slavery peacefully which would have amounted to very little deaths, certainly not one million, and that racial tensions would be better today.

Imagine being a southern child and watching union troops destroy your home and town, kill people you love, rape your mother and sisters, and then hearing them say they are there for the black man when you were under the impression that your father was fighting in the same spirit as the founders for independence. Right or wrong, that's going to guide contempt and hate.