Thread: "South celebrates Civil War, largely without slaves"

Originally Posted by hawgballs

Then why plan a 3 year commercial campaign? It is the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy and others similar groups trying to rewrite history.

Why? Texas has already done a much better job at rewriting history then any of those groups will.

I think it is silly for us debating what the Souths true reasons for seceding were.

I'm sure there were a lot of people that wanted to secede because of slavery, but I would be surprised if there wasn't an extremely large people who actually wanted to secede because of state's rights.

In my opinion, schools teaching the history that the Confederacy seceded because of slavery is mostly a result of the North winning. Pinning slavery as the south's morally wrong reason for seceding was great propaganda. That propaganda just continued on into the history books after the war. But taking wartime propaganda as history doesn't make it the truth.

(I grew up in Texas schools, what they taught me was that the lower classes where in it because of slavery, but the upper classes, the people who actually had money, slaves and an influence in politics, cared more about states' rights)

Originally Posted by Blah64

I think it is silly for us debating what the Souths true reasons for seceding were.

I'm sure there were a lot of people that wanted to secede because of slavery, but I would be surprised if there wasn't an extremely large people who actually wanted to secede because of state's rights.

In my opinion, schools teaching the history that the Confederacy seceded because of slavery is mostly a result of the North winning. Pinning slavery as the south's morally wrong reason for seceding was great propaganda. That propaganda just continued on into the history books after the war. But taking wartime propaganda as history doesn't make it the truth.

(I grew up in Texas schools, what they taught me was that the lower classes where in it because of slavery, but the upper classes, the people who actually had money, slaves and an influence in politics, cared more about states' rights)

No reason what you were taught isn't propaganda as well.

I was taught completely differently, and what I was taught makes sense logically (to me). Why would the lower classes care about slavery? A very small minority of Southern Whites owned slaves. I do not remember the exact statistics, but I know it was under 10%. The slave owners didn't care about states rights, they were afraid that congress would abolish slavery.

To get around congress abolishing slavery, the slave owners cried out that the issue of Slavery should be left up to the states, and used the Propaganda that the big, evil, Republican Government is encroaching on our state's rights to stir the non-slave owning majority.

Sorry, but I don't understand the logic of the non slave owners caring about slavery, and the Slave owners caring about states rights.

This whole post in kind of off topic, but I'd rather debate history than make fun of a bunch of crackpots.

Originally Posted by Blah64

I think it is silly for us debating what the Souths true reasons for seceding were.

I'm sure there were a lot of people that wanted to secede because of slavery, but I would be surprised if there wasn't an extremely large people who actually wanted to secede because of state's rights.

In my opinion, schools teaching the history that the Confederacy seceded because of slavery is mostly a result of the North winning. Pinning slavery as the south's morally wrong reason for seceding was great propaganda. That propaganda just continued on into the history books after the war. But taking wartime propaganda as history doesn't make it the truth.

(I grew up in Texas schools, what they taught me was that the lower classes where in it because of slavery, but the upper classes, the people who actually had money, slaves and an influence in politics, cared more about states' rights)

Originally Posted by linked article

Most historians say it is impossible to carve out slavery from the context of the war.
As James W. Loewen, a liberal sociologist and author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” put it: “The North did not go to war to end slavery, it went to war to hold the country together and only gradually did it become anti-slavery — but slavery is why the South seceded.”
In its secession papers, Mississippi, for example, called slavery “the greatest material interest of the world” and said that attempts to stop it would undermine “commerce and civilization.”
The conflict has been playing out in recent decades in disputes over the stories told or not told in museum exhibits and on battlefield plaques.

Whenever someone mentions state's rights, they do realize that the state's right they were fighting for was the state's right to allow one human being to own another human being, right?...

ROFL, people still believe that the civil war was because of slavery?

Originally Posted by Kraker Jak

ROFL, people still believe that the civil war was because of slavery?

Not all.

ROFL, people believe that slavery had nothing to do with the civil war?

Originally Posted by hawgballs

ROFL, people believe that slavery had nothing to do with the civil war?

S'ok, some still believe the earth was created in 7 days by a magic hoodoo man who loves everyone but hates gay people, too.