(08-26-2017 01:55 PM)jaredf29 Wrote: (08-25-2017 06:36 PM)JRsec Wrote: (08-25-2017 06:02 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote: (08-24-2017 08:50 PM)gosports1 Wrote: the idea of the confederacy was to break away from a nation it thought was oppressive and form a new one. is that much different than what the colonies did to the British? Some would argue no.
They declared war on the United States because the USA was no longer allowing them to own human beings as possessions.
Some would argue that is a very different circumstance than the circumstances which led to the Revolutionary War.
I'm just not interested in celebrating failed generals who declared war on the United States of America and caused a lot of good young men to die in the process over policies that are inarguably in retrospect - and that the time for the half of the country that chose to remain loyal to star-Spangled Banner -morally reprehensible.
You might want to celebrate a scoundrel like that but I'm not interested in it. And I'm not interested in hearing carefully crafted defenses of it.
They were on the wrong side of history and terrible miscalculation. And their descendants have moaning about it ever since.
That said, I am all for leaving up those imbecilic statues. I think it should serve as a permanent scarlet letter for those areas. And the most backward among them can celebrate it like a bunch of doofuses.
I also don't understand why the ideologues are running around arguing with those animals?
What are you going to do, argue a moron out of being stupid?
Let them march through the streets with their semi-automatic weapons flashing their heil Hitler signs at every camera in sight.
Just make sure you get good pictures of them so that you can send them to their employers and embarrass them on social media.
I'm sick to death of fooling around with these jackasses.
Yinz the firing on Fort Sumter happened in 1861. The Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. So you are correct, you don't understand. Lee wasn't an advocate of slavery. But neither would he take sides against the state of Virginia which he considered to be his first obligation.
But then that doesn't suit the hysteria over the statues.
I do think that what Mitch Landrieu suggested is the best solution. Take the statues and put them in Civil War museums. At least then the context is appropriate, which it ceased to be some years after the immediate families of the deceased war veterans passed. But when the South seceded to call a native born Southerner a traitor is a matter of perspective. They weren't traitors to the Southern States were they? Being a traitor, like Benedict Arnold is a matter of perspective. Arnold was a loyal subject of King George the 3rd. But he didn't live with KGIII did he? Therefore he was a traitor to us. Yet here you would switch that perspective for Lee and any other who lived in the South.
You logic fails here, as much as your time line does. I agree the war was as much about slavery as anything else, but it's underlying economical reasons were much more complex.
Now most in the South are upset and angry when a damned Nazi (which thousands of our family and friends died defeating) unites with those we consider to be miscreants in an effort to defend what was never really their heritage. You might feel the same if members of sinn fein protested on behalf of anything considered to be Northern.
The problem with this issue is that opportunists are capitalizing on something that has nothing to do with their aims today. But by attacking symbols that can stir an older ill they hope to draw more into their cause. Shame on our press for allowing that to happen.
This is taken completely out of context. Lincoln needed political capital in order to emancipate the slaves. Hell he needed it to pass the 13th amendment in the house. If Lincoln could've freed the slaves immediately, he would've.
The debate had been going on since the early 1800's. Everyone knew Lincoln's stance. But slavery wasn't "illegal" until slaves were freed. I said that slavery was as big of a reason as any for the war. But, it certainly was far from the only reason. The resistance to slavery in the North was a complex issue itself. There were those who approached the issue strictly from a human rights perspective, and then there were those whose opposition to slavery was simply a matter of business. Their industries wanted raw materials that the British acquired from many different outposts of their empire where labor was either cheaper, or the byproduct of slave labor. Their opposition to the South was a means of trying to level the playing field in the trade of raw materials with their European competitors.
Now I'm going to oversimplify a bit. It was freed slaves and religious groups that took up the clarion call for the abolition of an institution that was by its nature inhumane and unjust. So the abolitionists in the North were properly motivated leading many people today to gloss their industrialists views of slavery which really didn't see slaves as equals, but only as an unfair advantage in the production of raw materials in trade.
What people today don't grasp is that the average poor Southerner didn't own slaves, worked as share croppers, and indeed the institution of slavery disadvantaged them just as much if not more than it did Northern industrialists. But the Southern poor had no voice in the war. Southern plantation owners were the peers of the Northern industrialists. Both were wealthy upper class whose children were educated in the Ivy's or at West Point, and usually enjoyed time abroad. For those in power in the South the war was a point of conflict (and misguidedly honor) as they saw their Northern peers trying to undermine the source of their wealth to profit themselves. They never (because of class) saw the abolitionists as anything other than a nuisance because as it is today with corporations, Washington was controlled by "men" of means, both North and South.
So the poor whites in the South and the Abolitionists in the North were voices that for decades from the time the debate over slaver arose, were not heard until the groundswell among the public sided with the abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln was elected. It was the election of Lincoln that sobered up the wealthy in the South to the fact that political wrangling and congressional gridlock was no longer going to be their ally.
So it's very fair to say that Lincoln himself was a symbol of the coming illegality of slavery, but to say the abolition of slavery was the whole point of the war isn't accurate either. It was economic for the wealthy in the North and South, it was about slavery to the abolitionists and it was the moral groundswell that carried the election of Lincoln.
So I'll give credit to the work of the abolitionists for doing what was right. But I won't give credit to the Northern industrialists who by and large only used the abolitionist movement to accomplish their ends when the endless debate and gridlock of congress had done little to nothing for over 40 years with regard to the issue. But to say that Northern industrialists saw the war as anything but the economic defense of their industries is generous.
Unfortunately in the South the leadership patterns during the war were set in stone. The wealthy became officers and the poor walked into the mini balls. In the North it wasn't the abolitionists that did the majority of the fighting either. Conscription sites were set up for incoming immigrants and citizenship was granted sooner to those who would enlist. So there were major numbers of poor Irish who fought for the North and for the South although none of them had a stake in the battle over slavery, representation in Congress, or cared about the the struggle between the wealthy in the North and South. Those poor guys died by the thousands. And in the end the wealthy survived fairly well whether in the North or South while the poor got slaughtered.
Both the North's version of the war and the South's version of the war was carefully crafted by the politicians of the day. That is why Northerners think it was just about slavery and Southerners just about States rights. It was neither and both at the same time depending upon your class status.
But no matter how you shape it, slaves weren't illegal until Lincoln made it so in 1862.
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UNC Should Change Their Athletic Name
. Clearly there was a great deal of ambiguity surrounding Lee, both in written and spoken word and in deeds, which upon reflection probably expresses his inner conflicts about the war quite well. He clearly did not want to take up arms against the United States, but prioritized his ties to Virginia ahead of that.
