They did say that early on, yes. Politics is the art of the possible, and they couldn’t succeed if they pushed too fast, too hard. But the Republicans were still founded on the principle of opposing slavery, and it would be unrealistic to think they’d ever stop short of full abolition.
But tariffs, Napolitano? Really?
My belief is that there would be resentment anyways. A hundred years after slavery was officially over there was still seething hatred and resentment. These aren’t people who lived through the times, or had actual slaves themselves, but those who idealized a South that was all belles and gentlemen. I have no doubt that had slavery been voluntarily given up (which would have been pretty much impossible), there would still be those who claimed they were forced to give it up by the dastardly North. The South got the biggest asskicking any group of states ever did in the history of the US but if you look at how history was romanticized, you’d think they were the victors.
They needed to be taught a lesson. They needed to be told what was right because as Stewart pointed out in the piece, they weren’t going to do this voluntarily. ALL arguments about how we should have done this differently ignores the reality that there was no way to end slavery except through war, the South was that racist and hateful
But how would full abolition have ever been possible is the slave states had stayed in the union and resisted abolition legally? Especially is the Corwin amendment had given slavery Constitutional protection.
And it’s not true that all Republicans were abolitionists. The Republicans were opposed to the expansion of slavery but it wasn’t always linked to a concern for the slaves. Some Republicans didn’t want slavery to be expanded into the western territories because they wanted to keep black people, slave or free, out.
Yup. They acted like spoiled children. Running their own candidate (and thus splitting the Democratic vote) just shows how much they refused to compromise on anything.
It was the state legislatures that voted to leave the Union, not the nasty slave owners.
Yeah, I’m sure there was no overlap between those two groups. Solid point.
Smiting pending.
The slave masters were the rich & powerful. They used their power. And exempted some slave owners from the draft.
It’s too bad the poor whites were taught to blame the Yankees & the former slaves.
When I think of the topic “how do we view the Confederacy,” I think “through Hollywood, of course.”
And right from the start, from Birth of a Nation, through Gone With the Wind and, curiously, even during the Civil Rights Era (with the exception of Blaxploitation movies on the margins of the audience), Hollywood has always chosen a sympathetic view of the CSA.
What’s up with that shit?
You guys are a tough crowd.
Golden era Hollywood; the last hold out of “Slavepower.”
The South’s greatest tragedy, second only to the Civil War itself, was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It would have only been Lincoln with the political fortitude and acumen to hold back the frothing retribution that was unleashed with his death. Andrew Johnson was a pitiable substitute.
Indeed, and Johnson was from Tennessee, part of the hated South.
I heard them make both of those points.
But the other one is reasonable. I don’t recall reading about the smuggling of slaves into the US after importation. I’d think breeding them would be cheaper. However, if forced sales reduced the number of slaves, and if slavery were still legal, I’d suspect a big smuggling industry would begin, since the demand would still be there.
I read all three of Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative and I lost count of the number of southern people and times in speech and written letters northern aggression was equated with slavery for white southerners. This wasn’t just invective and it was never with any shred of irony.
I don’t understand.
Forget it, he’s on a roll.
Southern white people believed enslavement was terrible, their enslavement, which is what would happen if the North won, so their cause was just.
:dubious: Texas joined the US in part because Mexico forbade slavery as I recall.
Not even the dumbest Arkansan would believe that.