Narland wrote:The Temple of the Computer wrote:Again, the south fired the first shots. NOT the north. So I think it is safe to say that the South is the Aggressor, and as such, it is the war of Southern Aggression.
No, to say that the Northern Aggression is a lie, is disingenuous. The Civil war happened. The South had their reasons to secede, and the North had their reasons for destroying the Southern Confederacy by force, destroying its infrastructure, starving out its cities, and occupying it by military force. I find it a ludicrous oversimplification to blame it totally on "a bunch of racists" or to infer that the Confederacy was nothing but racist is even more so.
Indeed preservation of slavery was an important thing. You could follow up with most of the soldiers didn’t own slaves. They may however had concerns over the slaves getting “upity”
My relation at the time was a fellow named Angus William McDonald. He founded the 7th Virginia Cavalry. His wife kept a diary throughout the war and it’s still published today. She wrote how Angus and a couple business associates talked a great deal and were excited by the possibility of getting the slave trade going again. Slavery was on the minds of people.
The problem with the racism claim? It tends to be all encompassing. Are they all racists? Simple margin of error shows there are some that were not. I have heard “why would a black man fight for a racist?” arguments before. That can be explained as it’s their home and the racism was just the way it is. Especially; if that was all that you knew.
Many Southern revisionists try hard to eliminate the bad aspects. For example; I remember many (might have been here) talking about how slaves were not really beaten that much. Ignore the photos and there are actually written records of slaves in the Library of Congress. They talked about the beatings they received. One I remember was a guy mentioned He was whipped so bad his shoes filled with blood.
Anyway…….