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I mean, it kind of wasn't...
Lincoln honestly wouldn't stop talking about how he wasn't gonna touch slavery.
It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I beheve I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And, more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend, and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-4-1861-first-inaugural-address
What started it was the south thought the feds should be able to enforce southern law (escaped slaves are still slaves, and northern states had to return them) and the Feds said they couldn't force one state to follow another state's laws.
It's a valid distinction, but almost certainly not what she told her kids.
Like when people say it was over "states rights" but ignore the Feds sided with state's rights, and the South was the one arguing for a stronger federal government.
However during the war, Lincoln did outlaw slavery, but that was more of an economic sanction to dissuade European governments funding the South by buying up resources and land. The South would have still lost but it would have taken far longer if they were selling land/plantations/slaves to wealthy foreigners
It's one of the few things pretty much everyone gets wrong when you ask what causes it.
Yes, the north did not go to war over slavery, but the south sure did.
Claiming Lincoln was coming for their slaves isn't that different than modern ones saying Biden is coming for their guns
Slavery was the hot topic of the election, and despite Lincoln repeatedly saying he wouldn't outlaw slavery, the South kept saying it and eventually started a civil war over.
Like, the modern parallel is almost too on the nose. They're treating the border and migrants the same way
So it's important for people to understand what happened since we're facing the same shit.
Basically "states rights to be able to do what exactly?"
Like when people say it was over “states rights” but ignore the Feds sided with state’s rights, and the South was the one arguing for a stronger federal government.
States rights to force other states to follow their laws...
Their laws to do what exactly?
I mean, ultimately it's about states rights, but mostly states rights to own other human beings and treat them as cattle.
No, because Lincoln wasn't going to outlaw slavery before the civil war.
As I said in the very first comment:
What started it was the south thought the feds should be able to enforce southern law (escaped slaves are still slaves, and northern states had to return them) and the Feds said they couldn’t force one state to follow another state’s laws.
The South thought an escaped slave in a state where slavery was outlawed was still a slave. And that meant they were property and Northern states should have to capture them and send them back.
That was the line.
Saying it was just slavery is reductionist and doesn't make it seem as bad as it was.
You're giving them too much credit. And I don't know why you want them to seem better than they were.
You should read the declarations of succession which clearly state that slavery was the reason.
https://lemmy.world/comment/11343369
Tldr:
The slave states lied to make themselves sound better.
Edit:
Listening to the slave states for why the civil war started is like asking a trumpet at his rally what 1/6 was.
They aren't going to give you an answer based in reality, so why are we listening to them?
From the first paragraph of the Mississippi declaration of cause of secession:
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/secession-acts-thirteen-confederate-states
But sure, they were lying about it in their official documentation.
Specifically....
I literally already said this in the parent comment:
What started it was the south thought the feds should be able to enforce southern law (escaped slaves are still slaves, and northern states had to return them) and the Feds said they couldn’t force one state to follow another state’s laws.
So to recap, the American Civil War was about states' rights to [...] Force people who escaped slavery be returned to slavery. Is that right?
Yes, that was the final reasoning that led to the Civil War.
At no point was anyone of substance attempting to federally outlaw slavery until about 2 years into the civil war. At which point it was done to make the plantations less valuable to European investors who knew the North would win, but that the South was desperate for money/supplies and would sell on the cheap.
By outlawing slavery during the war, Lincoln depressed the Southern land prices, otherwise it would have went on even longer.
It's complicated shit. Which is why I take the down votes to explain it. Reducing it to "slavery" isn't doing justice to all the shit that was going on. It makes everyone seem better, and because that's the simplified version that makes it into highschool books, everyone keeps believing it.
You have said multiple times that the civil war was specifically about slavery. Which is exactly what the woman in the OP was denying. Why are you trying to argue semantics where none are required?
Trying to obfuscate the issue beyond that doesn't really help. If slavery were removed from the equation the entire issue would be moot.
Why are you trying to argue semantics where none are required?
...
Because details are important?
Why do you want to reduce an entire civil war down to one word in a way that makes both sides seem better than they were?
Trying to obfuscate the issue
Literally the opposite of what's happening here...
It's not like we are talking about states rights to sell alcohol or do anything else.
It was specifically the rights of one state to force another state to enforce slavery. Again, if slavery were removed from the equation we would not be talking about the civil war as we know it. That doesn't mean a civil war wouldn't have happened for another reason, but it didn't, and entertaining any other reality is just fiction.
It was specifically the rights of one state to force another state to enforce slavery
Exactly.
And the Northern states and the Feds were cool with maintaining the status quo of legal slavery until halfway thru the Civil War.
So if the South hadn't gotten greedy and tried to force a strong federal government, slavery would have stayed legal. But they tried and both won and lost at the same time.
They got the strong federal government they asked for, it just wasn't on their side.
So, their right to own slaves.
You didn’t do too well on the SAT/ACT reading sections, huh…
Sooo...
States rights to keep slavery, got it.
...
I hate to be the one that breaks this to you, but American conservatives lie about their reasons the vast majority of the time.
So while the South did claim that they started the war because the Feds were going to come take their slaves, that's just not true. As evident by Lincoln's inauguration speech. Check it out, it's mostly about slavery and how he wasn't going to outlaw it.
The South saying he was going to, should be listened to as much as when their modern counterparts like trump also make crazy claims about what is happening.
Hell, they called Biden a communist and kept saying he was gonna take their guns.
Why would anyone take an American conservative's words over facts?
The South lied about why they started the war, that shouldn't be surprising.
I understand what you’re saying, but you’re missing context.
The Federalists were anti-slavery and its expansion. Regardless of what Lincoln said in his initial address, he wasn’t the only one who was anti-slavery.
How do we know all this? We can look at sources that provide historical context, like this for example,
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-missouri-compromise
In 1819, Missouri wished to be admitted as a slave state because enslaved persons had already been brought to the region and were an important part of its local economy.
Northern politicians and, indeed, regular citizens had become concerned with what they considered southern dominance of the federal government, an influence that would only be enhanced with the addition of another slave state. The Three-Fifths Clause in Article I, Section Two of the Constitution provided for the counting of three-fifths of the slave population for purposes of determining representation in Congress. That rule gave southern states more congressional representatives than warranted by their white population and, hence, more electoral votes for president. As a result of the three-fifths rule, southern presidents became the norm after John Adams, and much of the federal government was staffed or run by southerners, from the judiciary to the chairs of key congressional committees.
This dominance had begun to grate on perceptive northern politicians, who used the phrase “Slave Power” to refer to southern political control of the federal government. Missouri as a slave state would simply cement that supremacy, and worse still, because it was located west of the Mississippi in the as-yet unsettled Louisiana Purchase region, its admission might mark the beginning of the creation of more slave states and thereby render perpetual the South’s control of the federal government.
That concern prompted New York’s newly sworn congressional representative James Tallmadge to introduce two amendments to the Missouri enabling resolutions. The first prohibited the further introduction of slaves into Missouri, and the second freed the children of existing slaves in Missouri when they reached the age of twenty-five years. Together these amendments would gradually end slavery in Missouri, and they passed the House by a northern majority in a sectional vote. Therefore, Missouri’s enabling act would not add to southern control of the federal government.
My counter to that, which states rights did the Southern states fight for?
Like when people say it was over “states rights” but ignore the Feds sided with state’s rights, and the South was the one arguing for a stronger federal government.
The Southern states though they had the "right" to force northern states to return escaped slaves.
Not over if slavery was legal, but over if a slave was still a slave in a state that outlawed slavery.
But I don't even think you read the last comment if you had to ask that
So long story short... essentially the right they wanted to have was the right to enslave people. Dress it up all you want but a rose by any other name is still a rose.
No. The states and the Feds all agreed on their right to own slaves and nothing was going to interfere with that "right".
It's not dressing it up. It makes everyone look worse....
Then why did the confederates specifically say it was about slavery when they surrendered?
Is that really a big difference? The point is the south wanted their slaves and they rebelled against the north to keep them
Is that really a big difference?
Huge.
The south thought of a slave as a slave. And their children would also be slaves.
The North viewed them as enslaved humans, who were just humans once they were in a state without slavery.
That is a deep and fundamental difference. It changes so much about how both sides viewed slavery. The North was ok with some escaping, but they really weren't going to lift a finger to stop it either.
While the South literally saw them as property.
If Lincoln had caved, it would have turned I to a total shit show. Not just northern cops, but "bounty hunters" who would likely grab any Black person they saw.
You really don't see why details are important? I can just let it go if it doesn't.
This is only a difference in perception not in reality.
The reality is that the southern states perception of slaves was and is wrong.
You seem to think that what the south said is more important with regard to the war than what they did.
Thats some Confederate sympathy If I ever saw it. Let me guess you're from the South and white?
How could that possibly be construed as Confederate sympathy? I'm sorry, I know you mean to be on the right side of an argument, but in what way is saying "southern states did not see slaves as people" even remotely sympathetic to them?
There is importance in the level of detail being presented. This is what the phrase "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" refers to. When we gloss over all nuance to the point that discourse becomes "this side good, that side bad," then we no longer have a portrait of how that came to be. Without such understanding, we lose the ability to prevent, and our sole recourse becomes reaction.
Pointing out that the southern states legitimately thought of slaves as less than human, mere property that should be returned via the force of the federal government when northern states would not comply, does nothing at all to make them seem any less monstrous. Instead, it shines another light on the inherent fascism of their stance - "Do as we say, or we will make you." When that failed, they threatened and ultimately attempted secession in a bid to form their own government.
The South did not want freedom. They wanted compliance. They wanted to dictate. They wanted control over someone else's body to be instituted at the federal level. Do the parallels to modern right-wing neofascist rhetoric need more emphasis?
Likewise, being cognizant that the North was content to turn a bind eye until the Union was threatened in no way excuses the South's stance on slavery. What it does, though, is emphasize how complacency and compromise with bad actors until it's too late is often a far too easy path to take.
There's much more that can be said, but I'm going astray of the topic at hand. At no point in the chain of comments was @[email protected] or anyone else presenting a favorable or defensive view of the failed Confederacy. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous and outright vile.
A lot of people just want to label one side "evil" and one side "good".
That's just not how life works, it's not that clean cut.
And if you go the simple route and say they were just evil, you miss the "why".
That "why" is very very important because we need to stop it from happening again.
And if you take a second and look around, shits real close to going bad again. We literally can't afford to ignore the details.
Unfortunately lots of people aren't smart enough to see all that, they want it to be like a football game where everyone picks one side and hates the other.
It's tribal behavior baked into our dna, and it takes a significant amount of smarts to get around those instincts. Some people just can't
Eh. I'd argue that's kind of a narrow interpretation of events. The violence in the territories in the lead up was 100% about slavery. That conflict just kept surging up through more official organizational structures. Lincoln dragged his heels in and was slow to emancipate, but John Brown was in kanasa chopping people up with a broadsword in 1856.
but John Brown was in kanasa chopping people up with a broadsword in 1856.
Yeah. But Kansas isn't in the South...
That was over new states all being against slavery by default. The slave states wanted some of the new states to also have slaves.
And that comes back full circle to slave states fearing a federal ban on slaves, they wanted to balance slave/free states so they wouldn't be outnumbered in the House/Senate.
Now, he was a badass tho, and was raiding the South prior to the civil war trying to start a slave revolt... But it didn't end up well for him.
But I was talking about legal means, not a revolt. Which would have been morally right. But not legal under their laws at the time.
I'd still argue the example of the slave state Missouri organizing raids on kansas speaks more about the issue of slavery than states rights. It was the opening bid to the civil war and it was individuals acting on moral convictions/racial hate fueling it. John Brown is such a mood.
the slave state Missouri
I'd agree with you there, but
it was individuals acting on moral convictions/racial hate fueling it.
You just said it was individuals.
They should get the credit for outlawing slavery. Not the people who were 100% fine to let it continue like Lincoln.
People just don't like it when there's no "good guys".
Sorry, this is what I get for trying to respond while hiding my phone at work. I guess I'm not making a delineation between the conflict and the 'legal' framework for the war. Yes Lincoln was a bit of a shit but he had abolitionists prodding him the entire time. (Ever read 'The Zealot and the Emancipator'? You might like it—really calls out Lincoln's positions and gives color to our boy Brown.)
You’re taking the quoted text out of context. Lincoln said that because he was trying to preserve the union.
But he was still against the expansion of slavery, he was very anti-Slavery: http://www.abraham-lincoln-history.org/lincolns-view-on-slavery/
The southern states seceded because they wanted to expand slavery, and hence the civil war.
Guess you fucked up by not clarifying at the start that slavery still was the reason, but their is much more nuance. People ain't gonna read that wall of text and still won't to rid themselves of potential trumpets.
That sounds like what I was told in school up here in Ohio. People are in here with a chip on their shoulder downvoting you into oblivion because Lemmy is an echo chamber and doesn't care to actually be correct so long as their tribe wins.
What's crazy is people always act like I'm defending the South when it comes up.
Both sides were shittier than people think.
I'm glad to see other people who would rather be correct than please the room, purely for the sake of not crippling their position through dishonesty.
Lemmy is such a fucking echo chamber it makes Reddit look like a utopia of fair and balanced discourse. God forbid you stray even 0.1% off the path determined by the hivemind and you get pounded with downvotes like it is Gaza.
Yeah, I've noticed. They're all team players here with no eyes on the ball, just the same as their opposition. I tend to agree with more of their desires and ethics than Republicans, but they all operate the same. Neither party will ever produce honest conclusions.
Do you know a better place? I really wanna bug out. I was invited to Mensa before, but I turned them down because it sounded like a circlejerk before I ever heard the word circlejerk. They've gotta be better than this though.
I had friends in Mensa, it is the usual academic wank fest of sycophants licking each others' arses, as long as you toe the line.
I'm not even asking for amazing discourse, just some place which isn't a complete and utter echo chamber like this shit hole. And I'm not talking of the communities known to contain nutters. Even Reddit was honestly far better but fuck spez and all that.
I'm not sure we'll ever find our place.
Don't give up hope brother, nothing is ever permanent.
edit: not sure who is going around down voting you, think you have an admirer
Just gender people who wanna have gender give them advantages without saying it means something.
ah, the nuts that have taken over the nuthouse. not to worry, it only means you're in good company!
That sounds like what I was told in school up here in Ohio.
Sorry... you're saying that makes it true? That's terrible reasoning. You probably were taught all kinds of things about drugs in Ohio which were complete lies.
You were also probably given a far rosier picture of American history than you should have been. Or were you taught, if you were taught about her at all, that Sally Hemmings loved Jefferson and wanted to be with him despite the fact that he never actually released her from slavery, suggesting he knew better. And despite the fact that even if the slave loves you, you still probably aren't giving the slave the choice to say no when you want sex, what with them being a slave.
But I know I sure wasn't taught that Jefferson raped his slave that he paraded around as his mistress in my grade school.
Calm your tits, sir. History has always been my least trusted subject. It's written by the victors after all.
What are you on about with drugs? Who tf is Sally Hemmings and why should I care?
Seriously?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Hemings
You should care that one of our revered founding fathers kept a slave mistress that he raped when other people are trying to deify them.
Also, you should care about black history because it's American history.
What the fuck can I do about long dead guy and his long dead mistress? Shit's over with. Focus on today.
You can remember her. Like you can remember other people who were part of the black history of America.
Or are you saying black history isn't important?
I'm saying history isn't important. Don't fuckin race bait me. I live in the now.
This is what you said after I tried to tell you who Sally Hemmings was:
What the fuck can I do about long dead guy and his long dead mistress? Shit’s over with. Focus on today.
So it sure sounds like you're saying history isn't important. Living in the now when you don't know the history is how past mistakes are repeated.
do you think the North started the civil war
How could that possibly have been your take away?
because it isn't relevant what Lincoln said if he didn't start the war.
So you believe trump supporters when they talk about Jan 6th?
Weird...
i have no idea what your logic is
You believe far right extremists rather than reality.
It's weird. But you do you.
The only person in this conversation is us, I'm asking you what the fuck you're talking about
Further, she asks why it started. To that: the secession of the confederate states.