• ripcord
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    1011 months ago

    The war wasn’t about slavery

    This is both the most ignorant thing I’ve read today, and also ironic considering it’s followed by complaining about ignorant people

    • @[email protected]
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      -711 months ago

      Way to show your ignorance and inability to learn from history. It’s about voting power and the same thing is happening today

      Let’s take a group of states and for this example we will call them “red states” now imagine their policies lack broad appeal but they keep winning. Hard to imagine right? Hopefully you can fathom it

      Now let’s come to an obstacle where they think it can either destroy their ensure they always win. Let’s say that obstacle is voting maps. Technically if the voting maps are fair then they always lose so what should they do? Rig the maps of course

      Now let’s pretend another part of the country is blue, they have popular opinions and stand to benefit from fair voting. Let’s pretend they pass a law requiring voting be fair, well what can the red states do at that point? They have to rebel, it’s the only way to stay in power. Maybe they will attempt to avoid certifying an election or maybe they will storm that capital. If all else fails then they might attempt to form their own union

      Now that you’ve seen a hypothetical, imagine if instead of red states and blue states it was slave states and non-slaves states. Now imagine if the blue/non-slave states wanted to bring in a bunch more states but they could only be blue (non-slave). Well then you would never have a red government

      And that is what happened, the slave states were worried that they wouldn’t be able to control the country so they rebelled

      I hope this entry level civil war education showed you how saying it was about slavery is dangerous and it fails to teach people the lessons from it that we are currently going through again

      • @Seleni
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        811 months ago

        It was about the southern states wanting to own slaves. They said so themselves in their secession letters.

        The northern states, not being complete monsters or wanting to treat fellow human beings like property, refused to let anyone join their side who wanted slaves.

          • ripcord
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            11 months ago

            Yes, and laws had been passed in (nearly) all that either slavery was outlawed or no NEW slaves could be imported. Slavery was being gradually eliminated and that’s what the rebel states were upset about. And the potential economic impact.

            In March 1861, Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America, gave his view on the issue:

            The new [Confederate] constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution . . . The prevailing ideas entertained by . . . most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. . . Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of . . . the equality of races. This was an error . . .

            Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner–stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.

            It’s not accurate to say it was “only” about slavery, but it’s the best one-point answer you could give, and the biggest issue.

            The issue is that there has been a giant movement to minimize the “we really wanted slavery” part are reframe it was a “state’s rights” thing which is highly inaccurate way to frame things and stupid.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 months ago

              Slavery was being gradually eliminated and that’s what the rebel states were upset about.

              I talked about this in another comment

              But thank you for having an actual comment

          • @Seleni
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            311 months ago

            … You haven’t actually read any of those letters, have you.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 months ago

              The northern states, not being complete monsters or wanting to treat fellow human beings like property, refused to let anyone join their side who wanted slaves.

              So obviously they are wrong because the Union already existed with the confederate states in it but let’s give this person the benefit of the doubt and say they meant after some of the slave states left (hard when they are dumb enough to think it was over slavery) as you can see from the image. You have grey states for Union states with slavery at the same time as the confederacy existed. Even if you want to ignore my explanation for why the Confederacy left the Union (not kicked out, not unable to join because the Union was moral) they are straight up lying by saying there wasn’t slavery in the Union

              Again the only people that say it was about slavery are racists who want slavery to return . Everyone else is smarter than that