No. Destroying the Indian nations was Jackson’s primary, driving obsession in life. Jackson was defending nothing. In fact, he even invaded Spain (via Florida) against the direct orders of his superiors just so he could kill some Indians.
You know what’s really funny about these “I’m an abolitionist and I don’t care who knows it” threads (and damn but they’re numerous and almost to the point of “just cut and paste a response from the last one” point):
If you read threads on entertainment, politics, religion, or just about any other subject, you’ll see that me, Liberal, John Carter of Mars, Sauron, Ogre, Ninety Wt, Zoe, astro, etc.,etc., are all over the frigging map and frequently completely disagree on major and minor issues.
Yet when our homeland is insulted we all close ranks, link shields, and advance.
It’s almost like something else that once happened with southerners who felt threatened and joined together… I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s something in U.S. history… (Flag raising at Iwo Jima maybe? or perhaps The Mandrell Sisters Variety Hour?.. well, it’ll come to me.)
I get it! Y’all feel like Yankees fans!
Which sort of describes what happened in many cases back then. For the wealthy and the political, it was about slavery. But for ordinary people, it was about pride and sovereignty. And I gotta say, your posts in this thread have been insightful, informative, and inspirational. You’re a great spokesman for our mother, the South. God (or whatever you please) bless you, Sampiro.
No problem.
The last two things I can think of that caused this sort of uniting of forces by Southerners who felt threatened were 1) When “Hee Haw” first debuted and 2) When “Hee Haw” was taken off the air.
Lee was a great guy, and I’m proud to celebrate his memory.
His HORSE, now … man, his horse was a jerk. If we ever have a state holiday for Lee’s horse, I might just self-immolate in righteous indignation.
Or move to Boston. I can’t decide which would be worse.
Ummmm…not so much.
The Civil War was not fought to either end or protect slavery. Slavery was simply the catalyst that brought the whole thing to a boil. There’s a very good discussion of this at http://www.civilwarhome.com/gordoncauses.htm. Some excerpts:
It was a states’ rights issue. Lee felt that states’ rights were paramount; that is why he returned to Virginia.
I have no problem with them taking a day off in his honor. One has to consider the actions of the man from his perspective in the society of his time, not from our current perspective. What he did took guts and was a very honorable act in his day.
Aw, c’mon, Traveller was a good guy. Even if he never understood the South lost.
(Nobody else read that?)
So there is a debate over the causes of the Civil War? And there are those who wish to portray it as not caused by a desire to protect slavery? Who’d have thunk it! Thanks.
Yes, we weep in our mint juleps that we could not claim Fran Drescher as The Nanny for our own.
I can’t believe nobody even acknowledged this. 
This is funny stuff.
When I was a kid there was about a 10 year streak in which Auburn lost to Alabama every year at the Iron Bowl and those who remained loyal were called “Shug’s Lost Causers” (Shug Jordan was the coach at Auburn). Similar thing.
I still think it was Yankees working for Nixon who killed Stringbean. And Junior Samples- that was no heart attack, I don’t care what anybody says.
Speaking of Hee Haw, I read where Lulu Roman has lost almost 200 lbs. She looks great, for a 61-year old.
I’m glad for her sake she’s healthier. I met her once at a charity golf tournament George “Goober” Lindsey sponsored in Montgomery and a lot of his fellow Hee-Haw stars attended. I don’t know if my experience was typical of a Lulu sighting, but she seemed… well… crazy as hell. (Her son was cute though.)
I consider some of mine fought by this thread. Thanks to everyone here keeping a level head.
Christmas is mostly a secular holiday now, and AFAIK, no gov’t employees get a paid holiday for Easter, which is always a Sunday.
It was a valid point…he was poking at my atheism.
I suspect our little friend is just baiting us, but too many people really are this ignorant. So I will set the record straight.
If by 'black people," you include the Spanish, yes they have been living in the coastal areas of the South for about 500 years. And the Native Americans have been here for thousands of years. I have no idea when they began to consider themselves Southerners and neither do you. Our cultures are so intermingled that you cannot separate them entirely. That is true of even the black slave and his boss:
Cite: (History Museum of Slavery in the Atlantic Web site by Pier M. Larson, an assistant professor of history at the Pennsylvania State University
It’s reasonable that you admit that northeners didn’t always see blacks as equals and that you kept some slaves as well. Because it is mostly the Northern states that had slaves for the longest time – by far.
They did come into the first English settlement in Virginia in about 1619, but they were in New York by 1624. New York had slaves for 200 years. Compare that with my home state of Tennessee. I think we had slaves for about 68 years. (A rough estimate.) It was longer in the Carolinas, but parts of the South weren’t settled when Massachusetts and Connecticut had booming economies – with slaves. All of the colonies had slaves in the 17th and 18th Centuries.
The fact that the first abolitionist journal was published in East Tennessee is not that big a surprise to those who understand Tennessee. When election returns come in, that portion of the state is still different. Back then, they were very anti-slavery. There was a very close vote on the gradual abolition of slavery long before the war, but it failed. East Tennessee wanted to form another state, but it didn’t.
So when you say, " Southerners didn’t stop enslaving black people until outsiders forced them to at gunpoint," your brush is a little too broad. Until you know the history of every state and maybe even the individuals involved, maybe you shouldn’t be making generalizing. You are perpetuating ignorance.
Some Northerners may have seen blacks as equals just as some Southerners did. And some Northerners didn’t have slaves just as Southerners didn’t. Some Southerners didn’t have to be forced to give up slaves. And many Southerners never persecuted a black person. Do you really think that all of the “outsiders” were from the North? I have a friend who was injured on one of the Freedom Rides. I didn’t meet him until four years later. But he, like many other “outsiders” is a Southerner. You are ignorant if you think that white people in the South were not involved in Civil Rights.
Are you aware of some of the horrible things that were done to slaves in New York? There is, I believe, a project now to make citizens more aware. Yes, some Northeners had some slaves.
Do you really want to continue to feign ignorance of this subject? I’ll save my notes just in case.
And although I think he’s too biased about his football teams:
(bold type added)