It wasn't only about racism...
Civil War
People love to water down the civil war in the United States and say the the south was "racist". Yes an easy view of the civil war is to say you had a bunch of white slave owners that simply hated blacks and wanted them enslaved, an thus succeeded from the Union. Well, nice re-write of history there. Try this on....
Republicans in the North were iron clad enemies of slavery. Prior to civl war they wanted the Southern states to drop slavery all together and they wanted it mandated by the federal government. At first glance people say "what's wrong with that?". Well this: nearly all the laborers in the South were slaves so with a federal mandate to stop slavery you suddenly impoverished every southern state that relied on this form of labor and the federal government offered no assistance monetarily or possible recourse to end slavery. You see this a lot today where the federal government steps in to "assist" on moral grounds and screws the pooch because of all the other dynamics involved. Take a look at Fannie and Freddie Mac for current examples.
While there were racist portions of slavery and certainly after emancipation there were huge increases in racism, there are more than a few land owners whose slaves stayed after slavery was deemed illegal because they served more as indentured servants, than slaves.
My position is the civil war could have been avoided had leaders in Washington proposed a remedy or path out of slave labor for southern states. Instead what we had were White Northern Republicans who hated slavery (which is good) but decided to simply crush Southern Democrats instead of working to find a way out of slavery that didn't destroy the livelihood of the southern portion of the union.
We currently see this every day in the federal government, their need to get involved on moral grounds without thinking of the ramifications. Learn from history, or repeat it.
People love to water down the civil war in the United States and say the the south was "racist". Yes an easy view of the civil war is to say you had a bunch of white slave owners that simply hated blacks and wanted them enslaved, an thus succeeded from the Union. Well, nice re-write of history there. Try this on....
Republicans in the North were iron clad enemies of slavery. Prior to civl war they wanted the Southern states to drop slavery all together and they wanted it mandated by the federal government. At first glance people say "what's wrong with that?". Well this: nearly all the laborers in the South were slaves so with a federal mandate to stop slavery you suddenly impoverished every southern state that relied on this form of labor and the federal government offered no assistance monetarily or possible recourse to end slavery. You see this a lot today where the federal government steps in to "assist" on moral grounds and screws the pooch because of all the other dynamics involved. Take a look at Fannie and Freddie Mac for current examples.
While there were racist portions of slavery and certainly after emancipation there were huge increases in racism, there are more than a few land owners whose slaves stayed after slavery was deemed illegal because they served more as indentured servants, than slaves.
My position is the civil war could have been avoided had leaders in Washington proposed a remedy or path out of slave labor for southern states. Instead what we had were White Northern Republicans who hated slavery (which is good) but decided to simply crush Southern Democrats instead of working to find a way out of slavery that didn't destroy the livelihood of the southern portion of the union.
We currently see this every day in the federal government, their need to get involved on moral grounds without thinking of the ramifications. Learn from history, or repeat it.
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