Sunshine
Established
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2017
- Messages
- 252
The primary reasons for the Civil War had more to do with economics than granting liberty to anyone. The Southern economy was agricultural, a continuation of the system that was in use since before and during the Revolutionary War. The Northern economy had shifted into a manufacturing economy as part of the Industrial Revolution. They may have not called them "slaves," but there was definitely a socioeconomic class of forced laborers in those factories, farms, mines and other industries. And let's not forget about indentured servants--people whose journeys from the Old World to the New were paid by sponsors, for whom the immigrants were legally required to work for a set number of years to pay off this debt. Such arrangements were easy to rig in the employers' favor, and the laborers had little or no legal recourse.Bullshit. Yes, it was over "states' rights". It was over "states' rights to own slaves".
I don't know the South from reading a novel, I know it from being born and raised there.
Southern plantations were the source of many of the crops that the Northerners used for food, and most of the raw materials, like cotton, used in the Northern factories. Both the raw materials and the finished products were most lucrative as exports, to England and the rest of Europe. Without those raw materials the Northern economy would have utterly failed, so when the Southern States decided to become their own nation, the Northern industrialists and politicians panicked, since they would no longer have access and/or control over the crops or the funds they generated.
The question of slavery WAS being debated in the national dialogue, and there were abolitionists in both the North and South working to end the practice. I believe that slavery would have died a natural death eventually, if the South had been given the time to adapt their economy. Looking at it from a political science point of view, the Northern Aggression, as many Southerners call it, was, in fact, an invasion onto their sovereign soil. Especially after they had succeeded.
States' rights versus the federal govt. was definitely a core issue of contention in the Civil War, and has been to this day. The Founders certainly never foresaw the size and scope of our current govt., or the extent of legal and financial control over the states, much less individuals. If they saw what we are dealing with today, they would rail against it.
And although they hijacked the abolitionists' argument to sell the war to the general populace, even Lincoln himself saw the vast multitude of newly freed slaves as a problem. He had plans to literally ship them back to Africa. That is why the nation of Liberia exists.
So, in trying to rid our nation of reminders of the war, such as a statue of Robert E. Lee, who, by all accounts was an exemplary soldier and leader in the US Army before the War, we are not only disrespecting and erasing his accomplishments, but those of all the men who fought, on both sides. By conquering such a formidable foe on the battlefield, the North's own soldiers and generals were earning their places in history, their right to be remembered.
And if we as a people choose to forget our past, our inheritance, and the reasons why, then not only are we doomed to repeat those mistakes, but we lose our perspective and our ability to help other nations or societies to overcome similar circumstances.