No, I didn't. I said it wasn't ONLY about slavery. Slavery was not the ONLY issue.
I hope that's clear. Anyone looking at history honestly cannot deny that slavery was a major factor. But it was far from the only one. I've already pointed out that the last four states to secede did not do so over slavery, but over Lincoln's call for them to provide troops to march into South Carolina after Fort Sumter, making the issue for them all about sovereignty. And that's just one example.
I agree with Shelby Foote on the subject: anyone who says secession and the war was about nothing but slavery is just as delusional as anyone who says that slavery had nothing to do with it.
edited 20th Nov '15 1:02:55 PM by andersonh1
It was about slavery or the protection of slavery. End of discussion. I think we've about used this topic up.
/sigh
It disturbs me that the Republican nomination is bringing this kind of stupidity out of the woodwork. You're far from the only one who's bought into it.
edited 20th Nov '15 1:01:13 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Is that the cue to lock the thread that could easily have just been a discussion over in the Race thread?
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.And yet you seem curiously unwilling to credit the Confederacy with its virtual monopoly on crimes against humanity. If Sherman's march is the absolute best you have to accuse the Union, it only highlights how unbalanced the moral scales of the conflict were.
edited 20th Nov '15 1:02:05 PM by Achaemenid
Schild und Schwert der Partei
That's one man's opinion. Look at other speeches and other documents of the time, and you will find some that agree with Stephens, and some that don't. Jefferson Davis has a different rationale entirely in his inaugural address.
The Confederacy hardly had a "monopoly on crimes against humanity". Sheridan's destruction of the Shenandoah Valley, at Grants orders. The New York Draft riots. Sherman's March to the Sea. Try to imagine George Bush ordering his generals to do what Sherman and Sheridan did against civilian targets, and tell me it wouldn't be considered a war crime.
Go look up the New York Draft Riots if you want to see the cruelty that Northerners were capable of when it came to black men and women. And orphans of course, burned alive in their orphanage.
edited 20th Nov '15 1:13:27 PM by andersonh1
Funny how we have five or six people arguing against someone who's clearly taking their facts from neoconfederate apologists. It's almost as if this sort of bad-faith trolling is distracting us from genuine conversation. Yeah, locking. andersonh1, you'd do well to cut your line of argument out if you intend to remain a member of this site.
edited 20th Nov '15 1:08:45 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

You're saying the secession wasn't about slavery?
Cornerstone Speech
Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.
. . . look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgement of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws.
Mississippi Articles of Secession
Georgia's articles of secession