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ORIGINAL: Zonie63

FR

I recall that many of my history teachers rarely used the actual textbook, as they would use their own supplemental materials and have an assigned reading list.

The causes of the Civil War are complex, and it was decades in the making. The seeds for the Civil War were first planted when the country first gained Independence.

Slavery was definitely the major issue, as the Abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates were in an ongoing struggle, and there were incidents of violence on both sides. But I think what really added fuel to the fire leading up to the Civil War was the argument over the expansion of slavery. They made compromises to try to hold the Union together, but secession had been openly discussed and threatened several times. It was only a matter of time before it actually happened.

One can argue that, technically, states' rights was the key issue when it came to the matter of the states' alleged "right" to secede from the Union. But the reason the animosity between North and South grew was because, frankly, the pro-slavery politicians were aggressively wanting to expand and were pushing things beyond the pale.

They were infuriating folks like John Brown who took matters into his own hands. For their part, Southerners got pretty pissed off at the Abolitionist writers who were strongly critical of slavery. They weren't exactly big supporters of Freedom of the Press back in those days. Harriet Beecher Stowe got hate mail from the South for writing "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Elijah Parish Lovejoy was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Illinois for his Abolitionist stance. These kinds of things were leading to some majorly pissed off people in this country.

That's probably the key reason why the Civil War started, because people on both sides were already pretty angry anyway over the issue of slavery. To say that it was over states' rights might have a grain of truth to it, but it makes it sound like all of those who fought and sacrificed in the Civil War died over a technicality. It doesn't really explain the magnitude of the event in question.

The aftermath and legacy of the Civil War would also need to be examined thoroughly, and that would include Reconstruction and the political deals which ended it. I think the KKK and Jim Crow laws should also figure prominently, although I'd hate to see the South become the scapegoat for all of America's sins. Each region of the country - North, South, East, and West - has its own share of grief, atrocity, and misery to own up for, as well as the national (Union) government. But we have progressed quite a bit since then.

We certainly can't change the past, nor should anyone be held responsible for things that happened before they were born. But the least we can do is tell the truth about our history.

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JVoV post 36: Religious conservatives are keeping the spirit of Jim Crow laws alive & well, just changing their targets.

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JVoV post 36: Religious conservatives are keeping the spirit of Jim Crow laws alive & well, just changing their targets.

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ORIGINAL: BamaD
There were many other issues. Government engaging in projects that southerners though were overreaching. Development of transportation and industry in the north only and nothing for the south. Their list of grievances was close to those in 1776 +slavery.

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

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ORIGINAL: epiphiny43

Nobody is claiming Lincoln was perfect, He was fairly desperate to save the Union. His plan had virtues we still might desire, a less 'racially' diverse nation, if still tense with religious and ethnic stresses. It was unworkable, of course, Free Blacks probably wouldn't go and had community protectors in the North. Who would take the population of slaves that didn't speak the languages and had lost connection to hereditary clans (The basic social unit of much of W. Africa) from time over generations and mixing of groups from slaveholder controlled mating. Evidence Lincoln and the general Abolitionist sentiment of the country still held Negros as inferior doesn't follow my reading, but is arguable. Such propaganda never even slowed from the South and certain voices. I don't think Northern sentiment was as charitable to 'uncivilized' native tribes, more evidence times change and attitudes evolve regionally and nationally.

They were going to give them their own country, Liberia, the capital is Monroeville, ever hear of it? Since Lincoln, in the Lincoln-Douglas debates stated that he did not consider blacks to be his equal I think you can draw the view that he did not.

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ORIGINAL: BamaD
The point of this thread, that the right is trying to remove Jim Crow and slavery from history is both false and absurd. So is the idea that modern whites are in any way responsible for either.

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ORIGINAL: epiphiny43

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

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ORIGINAL: epiphiny43

Nobody is claiming Lincoln was perfect, He was fairly desperate to save the Union. His plan had virtues we still might desire, a less 'racially' diverse nation, if still tense with religious and ethnic stresses. It was unworkable, of course, Free Blacks probably wouldn't go and had community protectors in the North. Who would take the population of slaves that didn't speak the languages and had lost connection to hereditary clans (The basic social unit of much of W. Africa) from time over generations and mixing of groups from slaveholder controlled mating. Evidence Lincoln and the general Abolitionist sentiment of the country still held Negros as inferior doesn't follow my reading, but is arguable. Such propaganda never even slowed from the South and certain voices. I don't think Northern sentiment was as charitable to 'uncivilized' native tribes, more evidence times change and attitudes evolve regionally and nationally.

They were going to give them their own country, Liberia, the capital is Monroeville, ever hear of it? Since Lincoln, in the Lincoln-Douglas debates stated that he did not consider blacks to be his equal I think you can draw the view that he did not.

The Liberia experience went poorly. For reasons to do with both the destination and with the desires and goals of the slave and freed slave. Most slaves were not African transportees but third to fifth generation North Americans, knew nothing of living in Africa and were quite aware of that, as well as few educated to self-sufficiency socially or economically. And, the country wasn't quite empty of 'natives'? Few freed slaves wanted to go.
The land was tropical mangrove swamp along the coast and even more difficult grassland inland, with far too distinct of rainy and dry seasons for pioneering the agriculture they had learned as slaves. The cultures adapted to African living weren't even memories for the African Americans. Total of maybe 15,000 African Americans arrived in what started as an American colony (out of roughly 4 Million slaves at the start of the War), which declared independence in 1847 and was recognized by the US diplomatically in 1862, Before the famous meeting of Lincoln and the black Abolitionist leaders.
Unlike current doctrinaire Right Wingers, Lincoln is distinguished by his growth/evolution of thought and values. Someone who never changes opinions is not paying any attention to reality and stays in their own state of Idaho constantly, fitting all input to previously held preconceptions. Why history has always been determined by the disruptive people, forces and events. The Conservative elements (By definition) of any society are at best delaying movement, ill fitted to cope with constantly changing social and economic realities. Which is not a value judgement of either the reluctant or the disruptive as to goals or to ends actually resulting.

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ORIGINAL: joether

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ORIGINAL: BamaD
The point of this thread, that the right is trying to remove Jim Crow and slavery from history is both false and absurd. So is the idea that modern whites are in any way responsible for either.

Point of reference: The organization that recommends concepts of every sort for Texas schools to obtain textbooks from (and subsequently many other states) is a very politically conservative body of people. These are the same that have fought to remove any reference to the Evolution of mankind and the Theory of Evolution. To put it Creationism as 'Science'. Its been in the news every few months for doing one thing or another to push a political ideology and 'rewrite history to a better perspective'. They have tried placing conservatives in the best possible light, and liberals in the worst. They tried to make Clinton's lie to the nation (i.e. an affair) as much worst that Bush's lie to the same nation (i.e. reasons for going to war in Iraq).

That they are trying to remove those things that show their political philosophy has not changed much in all that time. Showing they are still the same useless, poorly educated, fucktards they were back in Jim Crow's era. An yet, the nation has changed. But that is because of the knowledge of history, teaching the young to understand Americans best and worst moments. Why they happened, when they happened, the important people of that moment.

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ORIGINAL: BamaD
This ridiculous thread comes out at a time when there is an active drive to purge society of any southern perspective and to destroy any symbol of southern regionalism.

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ORIGINAL: Wayward5oul

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ORIGINAL: BamaD
This ridiculous thread comes out at a time when there is an active drive to purge society of any southern perspective and to destroy any symbol of southern regionalism.

It may be active now, but I have seen discrete indications of its inevitability for years, the most glaring being during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, when all Confederate flags were removed from the Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park (a Civil War battle site and memorial to soldiers, both Union and Confederate).

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

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ORIGINAL: Wayward5oul

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ORIGINAL: BamaD
This ridiculous thread comes out at a time when there is an active drive to purge society of any southern perspective and to destroy any symbol of southern regionalism.

It may be active now, but I have seen discrete indications of its inevitability for years, the most glaring being during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, when all Confederate flags were removed from the Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park (a Civil War battle site and memorial to soldiers, both Union and Confederate).

Exactly