# Which of the following best describes the Confederate cause? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 1, 2018, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374 "2018-12-01T04:40:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/81 "2018-12-03T14:47:14Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > The moral evils of the two sides were not comparable. Southern white culture and institutions of the 19th century were about as evil as humans can get and have ever gotten – easily comparable to Nazi Germany, the Taliban, and the worst communist regimes. An entire way of life built on mass brutality and rape. > > The crimes of the Union army pale in comparison. Spare me the hyperbole. It’s easy to be the moral authority behind your computer screen in 2018. Slavery was ubiquitous until the 19th century. It was a fact of life nearly everywhere and forever. There was not any more “mass brutality and rape” in the antebellum South than there was in any other slaveholding society. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/82 "2018-12-03T15:02:03Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > I would argue that Lincoln’s decision to re-supply Fort Sumter was an intentionally provocative act of war, even though it was Confederates who fired the first shots. Regardless, provocation from either side was not justified, and I have no desire to defend it. What about the South’s decision to secede from the Union? That was an intentionally provocative act of war. All Lincoln was doing by resupplying the fort was… resupplying a fort, which lay within legal US territory. The fact that an group of criminals declared themselves independent doesn’t change that. > [@EscAlaMike](#): > > “Manifest Destiny”, Nationalism, and the American brand of imperialism. Are all minor footnotes compared to slavery. > [@EscAlaMike](#): > > Maybe not. I’m not arguing for the “righteousness of the Southern cause”. I’m arguing _against_ the righteousness of the American cause. Great for you. Is there a reason why you’re doing this? Because as a decent human being I think it’s pretty obvious that the South was oon the wrong side of history here. > [@EscAlaMike](#): > > Spare me the hyperbole. It’s easy to be the moral authority behind your computer screen in 2018. Slavery was ubiquitous until the 19th century. It was a fact of life nearly everywhere and forever. There was not any more “mass brutality and rape” in the antebellum South than there was in any other slaveholding society. Slavery was no longer ubiquitous by the time of the Civil War. The South was hanging on to a barbaric practice long after the rest of the world (except Brazil) had moved on. Also: “yes, slavery was wrong, but all the cool kids are doing it!” ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/83 "2018-12-03T15:09:33Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > Spare me the hyperbole. It’s easy to be the moral authority behind your computer screen in 2018. Slavery was ubiquitous until the 19th century. It was a fact of life nearly everywhere and forever. There was not any more “mass brutality and rape” in the antebellum South than there was in any other slaveholding society. If you really believe this, then you are ignorant of the history of slavery. The kind of slavery in the US (and the Caribbean and much of Latin America, though most of those places ended slavery before the US) was fundamentally different, and far more brutal, than the slavery from ancient Rome. There may have been a few other slave societies as bad as that of the Americas, but none were worse, and many were far less brutal. American slavery was unusual in that it was race-based, and slaves were not considered fully human. Why do you feel the need to defend it, or minimize its own evil? You don’t bear any blame for it at all, as a Southern white person. I’m also a Southern white person – I grew up in Louisiana. I bear no blame for slavery either. But if we’re misrepresenting history, or minimizing the evil of our forebears, then we do bear some blame. In my opinion, Southern white society has never fully accepted how utterly horrible slavery was. It’s never fully accepted that the “Southern way of life” was an evil way of life, and the notions of Southern chivalry were the height of hypocrisy. And rhetorical dismissals such as yours are part of the tools that Southerners have used for decades in order to maintain the fiction that the Confederacy wasn’t unusually immoral, even for its time. We should stop, and recognize how evil our forebears were to their black neighbors, during and after slavery, and how wrong it is to make excuses for or rationalize that evil behavior. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/84 "2018-12-03T15:10:36Z")
Disclaimer: I’m from the south, both ancestrally and as a personal prior place of residence, although I never regarded it as “home”. I put “It’s a complex issue and both sides were flawed.”, _not_ because it isn’t true that the south’s reason for seceding was for one of the worst reasons possible, but because the north’s motivations were not exactly pure. Yes, there plenty of sincere abolitionists, and their desire to end slavery was certainly _part_ of the coalition of northerners’ perspectives, but it would be a mistake to characterize the entire north (or its elected Senators and Representatives) as a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment. There were some in the north who were (or would have been) OK with the continuation of slavery but who, for political ideological reasons, did not like the precedent of American states simply choosing to leave the union at will, and therefore supported the notion that it was illegal for the southern states to do so. There were people throughout the north who were (or would have been) happy to let the southern states work out their own answers w/regards to slavery but who resented southern intrusion upon the rights of northern states via legislation such as the Fugitive Slave Act. And there were some politicians in the north whose interests were primarily economic, who had long-range interests in the south’s agricultural products, who ideally wanted to see some combination of events leading to the south continuing to produce them, the products being cheaply available to themselves as manufacturers, and the south in a position of reduced power to control those transactions – something that an independent south making separate trade agreements with Britain and Europe could threaten. Only a subset of the folks in the north saw the slaves as equally human in intelligence, worth, and dignity and had a partisan interest in the war in order to free them and give them full and equal rights. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/85 "2018-12-03T15:16:51Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > Spare me the hyperbole. It’s easy to be the moral authority behind your computer screen in 2018. Slavery was ubiquitous until the 19th century. It was a fact of life nearly everywhere and forever. There was not any more “mass brutality and rape” in the antebellum South than there was in any other slaveholding society. Actually by 1860 Europe was pretty much free of slavery. Canada and Mexico had few slaves and no system of slavery. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/86 "2018-12-03T15:31:59Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > You are exactly right. The industrialists (broadly speaking) didn’t really give two hoots about slavery. What the northern industrialists wanted were protective tariffs, so that European goods would cost a lot more, forcing colonists to buy goods made in American factories through simple economics. But the southern plantation owners opposed tariffs, because tariffs enacted on goods coming into America from Europe meant that European nations would counter with tariffs on goods going in the opposite direction. This made American cotton and tobacco, produced in the South, more expensive and made it more difficult for the southern plantations to compete with tobacco and cotton produced elsewhere. > > The industrialists didn’t have the votes to get their protective tariffs. They had been members of the Whig party, which favored economic protectionism and modernization. But the Whig party started to collapse in the late 1840s and early 1850s, largely over the issue of slavery. > [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > On the eve of the Civil War, tariffs were lower than they had ever been. Southerners wrote the Tariff of 1857. Had they decided to stay politically engaged, they had the numbers to defeat the Morrill Tariff of 1861, but they didn’t want to do that because secession wasn’t about tariffs. > > If it were about tariffs then we would expect that they would rate at least the barest mention in the various states’ Ordinances of Secession. But they do not. (Or not that I’ve seen; perhaps you’re aware of one that I’ve missed). This was before the time of things like income taxes and sales taxes. Tariffs used to be considered the normal means for a government to collect revenue. You put a tax on imported goods. And the United States didn’t import agricultural products; we were an agricultural exporter. Putting a tariff on agricultural goods would have been useless. (In Europe, where they did import agricultural products, they put the tariffs on them.) If the government wanted to collect revenue it had to put a tariff on something that was imported. Which at the time was industrial products. Britain was the main industrial manufacturer of the era and we imported a lot of British industrial products. So the government put a tariff on them to collect revenue. Some Americans saw this as a business opportunity. If imported industrial goods were being charged a tariff, domestic industrial goods could be manufactured at an advantage. So they built factories. There were plenty of southerners who had money. They could see the same situation. There was nothing that stopped them from investing in factories. But they chose to cling to their old agricultural system instead. That was a bad decision but nobody else did it to them. And when the Confederacy was formed as a nation, one of the first things it did was enact a tariff on industrial goods of its own. As I said, government needed revenue and that was how it was done at the time. > [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > At the same time, you had the abolitionists, who opposed slavery, but also did not have enough votes on their own to push their agenda forward. You’re acting like the abolitionists were a major political force. They weren’t. They existed and they were loud but they held no actual power. They were like the Libertarians of their day. A few abolitionists joined the Republican party. But most did not because the Republican party was not seen as a major supporter for abolition. Most abolitionists voted for the Liberty party or the Free Soil party. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/87 "2018-12-03T15:38:52Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > Spare me the hyperbole. It’s easy to be the moral authority behind your computer screen in 2018. Slavery was ubiquitous until the 19th century. It was a fact of life nearly everywhere and forever. There was not any more “mass brutality and rape” in the antebellum South than there was in any other slaveholding society. No, it wasn’t. Slavery had disappeared in Europe during the middle ages. When slaves began being brought to the American colonies in the 17th century, it was the revival of practice that hadn’t existed in western society for over six hundred years. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/88 "2018-12-03T15:39:34Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Disclaimer: I’m from the south, both ancestrally and as a personal prior place of residence, although I never regarded it as “home”. > > I put “It’s a complex issue and both sides were flawed.”, _not_ because it isn’t true that the south’s reason for seceding was for one of the worst reasons possible, but because the north’s motivations were not exactly pure. Yes, there plenty of sincere abolitionists, and their desire to end slavery was certainly _part_ of the coalition of northerners’ perspectives, but it would be a mistake to characterize the entire north (or its elected Senators and Representatives) as a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment. There were some in the north who were (or would have been) OK with the continuation of slavery but who, for political ideological reasons, did not like the precedent of American states simply choosing to leave the union at will, and therefore supported the notion that it was illegal for the southern states to do so. There were people throughout the north who were (or would have been) happy to let the southern states work out their own answers w/regards to slavery but who resented southern intrusion upon the rights of northern states via legislation such as the Fugitive Slave Act. And there were some politicians in the north whose interests were primarily economic, who had long-range interests in the south’s agricultural products, who ideally wanted to see some combination of events leading to the south continuing to produce them, the products being cheaply available to themselves as manufacturers, and the south in a position of reduced power to control those transactions – something that an independent south making separate trade agreements with Britain and Europe could threaten. > > Only a subset of the folks in the north saw the slaves as equally human in intelligence, worth, and dignity and had a partisan interest in the war in order to free them and give them full and equal rights. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons still counts as doing the right thing. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/89 "2018-12-03T16:35:19Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons still counts as doing the right thing. Well, the poll was largely about the south’s behavior and motivations. If doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons is different from doing the wrong thing under extenuating circumstances, I’d think there’s a difference also between doing the right thing for the right reason and doing it for the wrong ones. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/90 "2018-12-03T17:29:41Z")
Historical note: While the people of the South were fighting to preserve their entire way of life, ordinary Northerners had little reason to fight, and could have become quite disgusted with that horrible bloody war when there was no quick victory. A negotiated peace would have been inevitable if the North did not have a Great Cause to fight for. They did fight on, however, largely because top opinion-makers in the North had enraptured them with the story of “That new Saint, than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by love of men into conflict and death, — the new [Martyr whose suffering did] make the gallows glorious like the Cross.” [The song commemorating John Brown’s martyrdom became, by far, the most popular song in North America during the Civil War years.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSSn3NddwFQ) > [@Babale](#): > > … Anything good about how the South got poor whites so enthralled by slavery? … It’s always been good policy to control a lower class by _showing them a class even lower than themselves._ (And this is why the kleptocrats in today’s America are so eager to incite hatred against blacks and Hispanics.) > [@hajario](#): > > Would any of those states succeeded if all of the adults in the state could vote on the decision? “All the adults”? Does this include adult slaves? (If you’ve not read it already, you may find [a letter from an emancipated slave to his former owner](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/to-my-old-master.html) to be interesting.) ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/91 "2018-12-03T17:47:23Z")
I love that letter! A pleasure to read it again. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/92 "2018-12-03T18:30:51Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > No, it wasn’t. Slavery had disappeared in Europe during the middle ages. When slaves began being brought to the American colonies in the 17th century, it was the revival of practice that hadn’t existed in western society for over six hundred years. To be fair, that’s only true if you don’t count serfdom as a form of slavery, which it totally was. But as others have pointed out, not all forms of slavery are equal, and the Colonial race-based chattel slavery was significantly worse than serfdom. So the 600 year figure is my quibble. But even serfdom was long gone from most of Europe by the mid-1700s, meaning the Europeans got rid of their ‘diet slavery’ long before the South got rid of the real thing. > [@AHunter3](#): > > Well, the poll was largely about the south’s behavior and motivations. If doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons is different from doing the wrong thing under extenuating circumstances, I’d think there’s a difference also between doing the right thing for the right reason and doing it for the wrong ones. I am pretty sure that what 90% of us are saying is that there are no mitigating circumstances that make slavery, or fighting a war for slavery, morally ok. > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I love that letter! A pleasure to read it again. Sick Burns of History! I think I read this one back in high school, but I’m not sure. Was definitely worth the re-read! I just love some of these letters. There’s a great one from Mongolian history, but I’ll spoiler it as it is a bit off topic. A letter from one of the Mongolian Khans in response to a letter from the Pope that rebuked the Khan for going against God’s will. The Khan’s response is to explain, if your God is all powerful, then he must want me to win – otherwise he would have surely made me lose by now. Therefore, let’s schedule a time for Jesus to come pay tribute to me, the Khan. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/93 "2018-12-03T18:33:48Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > The Republican platform in 1860 ended up therefore being the opposition of slavery, protective tariffs for industry, a homestead act so that the new western territories which were becoming states could be settled, and the construction of a railroad to the Pacific. > > Lincoln did promise that the South could keep its slaves. But he refused to back down on his promise that all of the new territories would become free states. Yes, in theory the Republicans platform said nothing about \*banning \*slavery, just stopping it’s spread into new territories. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/94 "2018-12-03T18:43:24Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > “Manifest Destiny”, Nationalism, and the American brand of imperialism. All of those were not unique to the North. In fact before the war the Democrats loved manifest Destiny while Lincoln opposed it. So, you’re pretty much wrong there. And the South was more Nationalistic than the North. And of course the American brand of imperialism was hundreds of times better than the European kind. so that’s not even all that evil either. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/95 "2018-12-03T18:45:53Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > Maybe not. I’m not arguing for the “righteousness of the Southern cause”. I’m arguing _against_ the righteousness of the American cause. The American cause turned righteous on January 1, 1863. But in any case, if the South was worse in atrocities than the North that blows your argument away. No doubt the Allies committed several war crimes during WW2, but saying that the Allies didnt have a righteous cause is bogus. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/96 "2018-12-03T18:47:50Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > You’re acting like the abolitionists were a major political force. They weren’t. They existed and they were loud but they held no actual power. They were like the Libertarians of their day. > > A few abolitionists joined the Republican party. But most did not because the Republican party was not seen as a major supporter for abolition. Most abolitionists voted for the Liberty party or the Free Soil party. I think you need to do a little research on the origins of the Republican Party. This is from Wikipedia, but it seems to be fairly accurate: > [@](#): > > The Republican Party began as a coalition of anti-slavery Conscience Whigs such as Zachariah Chandler and Free Soil Democrats such as Salmon P. Chase, who were opposed to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, submitted to Congress by Stephen Douglas in January 1854. > … > The Republicans absorbed the previous traditions of its members, most of whom had been Whigs, while others had been Democrats or members of third parties (especially the Free Soil Party and the American Party, also known as the Know Nothings). The Free Soil Party was largely absorbed into the Republican Party in the mid 1850s. > [@](#): > > the party membership (including leaders such as Hale and Chase) was largely absorbed by the Republican Party between 1854 and 1856 by way of the Anti-Nebraska movement. As for the Liberty Party, most of its members joined the Free Soil Party in the late 1840s and early 1850s, and most of the remaining members of the Liberty Party joined the Republican Party after its formation. > [@](#): > > By 1856, very little of the Liberty Party remained after most of its members joined the Free Soil Party in 1848 and nearly of all what remained of the party joined the Republicans in 1854. Links: > **[History of the Republican Party (United States)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_Republican_Party)** > > The Republican Party, also known as the GOP (Grand Old Party), is one of the two major political parties in the United States. It is the second-oldest extant political party in the United States after its main political rival, the Democratic Party. > In 1854, the Republican Party emerged to combat the expansion of slavery into American territories after the passing of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. The early Republican Party consisted of northern Protestants, factory workers, professionals, businessm... > **[Free Soil Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Soil_Party)** > > The Free Soil Party was a short-lived coalition political party in the United States active from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into the Republican Party. The party was largely focused on the single issue of opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories of the United States. > The Free Soil Party formed during the 1848 presidential election, which took place in the aftermath of the Mexican–American War and debates over the extension of slavery into the Mexican Cession. After the Whi... > **[Liberty Party (United States, 1840)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Party_(United_States,_1840))** > > The Liberty Party was an abolitionist political party in the United States prior to the American Civil War. The party experienced its greatest activity during the 1840s, while remnants persisted as late as 1860. It supported James G. Birney in the presidential elections of 1840 and 1844. Others who attained prominence as leaders of the Liberty Party included Gerrit Smith, Salmon P. Chase, Henry Highland Garnet, Henry Bibb, and William Goodell. They attempted to work within the federal system c... ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/97 "2018-12-03T18:47:54Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > Spare me the hyperbole. It’s easy to be the moral authority behind your computer screen in 2018. Slavery was ubiquitous until the 19th century. It was a fact of life nearly everywhere and forever. There was not any more “mass brutality and rape” in the antebellum South than there was in any other slaveholding society. There was , actually. Slavery due to punishment for a crime or as a POW had some tiny basis as a just cause. But the South was into slavery due to racism. That was far worse than other types. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/98 "2018-12-03T20:59:25Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > Spare me the hyperbole. It’s easy to be the moral authority behind your computer screen in 2018. Slavery was ubiquitous until the 19th century. It was a fact of life nearly everywhere and forever. There was not any more “mass brutality and rape” in the antebellum South than there was in any other slaveholding society. This simplistic view errs in both directions. Before the time of Christ, Solon of Athens banned debt bondage and freed all enslaved Athenian citizens; Cyrus the Great of Persia freed the slaves in his Empire; Asoka the great Buddhist Emperor in India abolished the slave trade; ancient Chinese Emperors also abolished slavery, at least for periods. In the 7th century A.D. Saint Balthild of Ascania, who was herself enslaved as a child but became Regent of Frankia when her husband Clovis II died very young, banned the enslavement of Christians. Enslavement of blacks, heathens, and Muslims remained generally legal but in 1493 Queen Isabella of Castile banned the enslavement of Native Americans. Those who had already been sold by Columbus in Seville were tracked down, purchased, and released. Since Slavery has little purpose when the wages of peasants are at bare subsistence level, slavery could be abolished in Western Europe with little economic effect: serfs were often effectively just the tax-paying vassals with the least land. So it’s quite incorrect to assert that slavery similar in scale to the antebellum South was common-place before the 19th century. OTOH, slavery was NOT fully abolished in the 19th century and continues to this day. It is estimated that there are perhaps 20 million slaves today just in India. [Here’s a chart showing where the world’s 30 million slaves live](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/10/17/this-map-shows-where-the-worlds-30-million-slaves-live-there-are-60000-in-the-u-s/?utm_term=.5d9a4f968aad); other estimates put the world-wide slave total at 46 million or even 70 million. In the U.S. there are over 2 million people presently incarcerated in prisons or jails. Some of them are compelled to work for 23¢/hour or less, and placed in solitary confinement if they refuse. In addition to these “legal” slaves of the state, there are at least 60,000 privately “owned” slaves in the U.S., or probably _much_ more than that depending on how broad a definition is used. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/99 "2018-12-03T21:34:57Z")
I believe in the right of self-determination. As such, I think that the people of South Carolina had a right to secede from the Union and form another ‘union’ should it so choose without fear of violent reprisals. I see it as no different than Brexit or if California decided it wanted to be its own country. I feel that joining the United States was a voluntary association and as such, leaving the United States should be a voluntary decision. At the same time though, I don’t think that the ‘people’ of South Carolina did choose to secede. I think that the white landowners chose to secede. If there would have been a vote among all of the people including slaves and women that voted for secession, then I think that the Federal government would have been remiss in a violent response. Since that is not what happened, I still abhor violence, but do not recognize that South Carolina was exercising their right to secede in a moral manner. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2018, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374/100 "2018-12-03T23:36:42Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > I am pretty sure that what 90% of us are saying is that there are no mitigating circumstances that make slavery, or fighting a war for slavery, morally ok. Oh. Well I agree with that completely. Pointing to the north and saying “But they…” doesn’t erase southern culpability. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-of-the-following-best-describes-the-confederate-cause/825374.md?page=6)