Boston's Holocaust Memorial Vandalized

[Reynolds]

Actually, the Idea of the Union fighting to end slavery wasn't introduced until 1863, two years after the war began. So what was the North fighting for for those two years?

The only reason lincoln decided he was going to free the slaves was to keep European powers from entering the war on behalf if The South.
Some people should research how Lincoln truly felt about "negros."

 

[Mr. Davis]

Money. Just follow the money.

The South was fighting for money, too! They were about to lose all of the free labor that kept their economy going. They'd NEVER pay even what we call today, "slave wages."

 

[JohnDeereFan]

The South was fighting for money, too! They were about to lose all of the free labor that kept their economy going. They'd NEVER pay even what we call today, "slave wages."

Actually, they were already losing it. Slavery was already on the way out, as mechanization made it economically untenable. HIstorians believe it would have died out on its own by the 1890s. Slave owners were not stupid. They knew this.

 

[TCassidy]

The South was fighting for money, too!

Obviously.

They were about to lose all of the free labor that kept their economy going.

Minor issue. The major issue was tariffs on exported cotton and imported industrial equipment.

They'd NEVER pay even what we call today, "slave wages."

Slavery would have died out on its own by the 1880s. It was, at best, a secondary issue.

 

[Ziggy]

TC: "But all those who served in the Confederate Army were made US Military Veterans by U.S. Public Law 85-425: Sec. 410 Approved 23 May 1958."

Seems that this would negate all the claims otherwise that their monuments would have to go -- they were clearly considered US Military Veterans, and thus should be respected in that sense.

Wonder how long it now will be (as the Trumpster noted) before slave-holding other people like Washington and Jefferson will have to have their statues taken down? Maybe we need to put Reagan on the dollar bill and quarter and give the Indians back the nickel?

 

[Bro. Curtis]

The Indians ? Didn't they lose ? Tear down their statues and tell them to get over it.

 

[rsr]

Minor issue. The major issue was tariffs on exported cotton and imported industrial equipment.

That would be news to the fire-eaters who drew up the ordinances of secession; they uniformly listed slavery as the main issue. I guess they were either too stupid to know the real cause were were lying. My guess is that they were lying because it was much better to declare slavery, not tariffs were the real cause because so many more people would get behind slavery and not so many behind tariffs.

The fact is that tariffs had been declining in the 15 years before the Civil War. The Morrill tariff, which was protectionist, had little chance of being passed — until the delegations from the seceded states withdrew. That of course, boosted the belief — aided by cotton interests in England — that the war was really about a tariff that would not have been passed without session and occurred after, not before, the Southern states withdrew.

Slavery would have died out on its own by the 1880s. It was, at best, a secondary issue.

There is no evidence to suggest this. The percentage of slaves as a share of the total population in the Southern states was increasing by 1860, not decreasing. If slavery would have "died on its own by the 1880s," why did the Southern plutocrats insist on gambling their entire society on something that would have passed in twenty years? Sure, they could have been deluded. But obviously didn't think so.

And to believe that the poor Southern planters were being economically strangled by the North is to ignore the fact that capital investment in slaves and cotton was more profitable than investment in the North and it just made good economic sense for them to put their money into land and slaves than into industrial development.