It turns out the Civil War really was about Slavery

[el_bryanto]

This is a great video taking apart the arguments that Neo-Confederates use to argue that the Civil War wasn't about slavery.

I think it's worth watching; I am curious what people think about it. It does, in the last bit, talk about the sacrifice of the Union Army in fighting against the South.

Bryant

[HFRN]

1. It's wrong to say the civil war was about slavery

because that would be like saying whites died to free them

[el_bryanto]

3. Why would it be wrong to say that some whites died to free them?

While other whites died to keep them enslaved?

Bryant

[Marr]

5. Uh, a whole lot did just that. /nt

[HFRN]

6. no, white privilage would have protected them from that nt

[el_bryanto]

8. Wait, what? Do you understand what White Privilege is? nt

[Sheldon Cooper]

9. This may be the stupidest goddamned thing I've ever heard.

So, congratulations for that achievement.

[HFRN]

10. and i congratulate you on yours

one has to be very clever to use profanity, and have video junk scattered on their tagline

[Sheldon Cooper]

11. Yes, profanity and "video junk" are clearly related to both the Civil War, AND white privilege!

Congrats again on your overall brilliance!

[HFRN]

12. well, you're the one who posted them in the thread, i didn't

i only noticed the clutter

[tabasco]

2. It's sickening revisionist history to claim otherwise

Slavery was a central issue in the American Civil War.

Anyone who claims otherwise is ignorant or a liar.

Abolitionists were a powerful, vocal and irrepressible pro-war contingent in the North.

[Major Nikon]

4. Without slavery there would never have been a war

It's that simple.

[struggle4progress]

7. The Confederacy often proclaimed the wondrous righteousness

of its habit of holding blacks as chattel

But when confederates wanted to inflame each other to fight against the Union, a typical accusation was that the Union wanted to enslave white confederates

In the proclamation he issued from Danville on 4 April 1865, after the fall of Richmond, Jefferson Davis (for example) hoped to re-inspire confederate soldiers: If by stress of numbers we should ever be compelled to a temporary withdrawal ... again and again will we return, until the ... enemy shall abandon in despair his endless and impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved to be free

[Laxman]

13. I'll Take Original Historical Sources For A Thousand Alex.....

while it may be true that not every soldier fighting in the Civil War was fighting to protect or end slavery, what may have been in the mind of a poor southern sharecropper or of a northern factory worker sent to fight and die was not the determinant of the cause of the war. Even pretending for a moment that things like the debate over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, or the Dred Scott decision and the Fugitive Slave Act or John Brown and "Bleeding Kansas" never occurred, it's hard to ignore source documents.

The seceding Confederate states thought it important to declare just why they were withdrawing from the Union. Without exception, slavery-and the desire to protect the institution-was at the forefront of these declarations. Georgia's declaration mentioned slaves or slavery 36 times. South Carolina 18 times. Texas, 22 times. Mississippi only 7 times, but they also thought it prudent to include a handy reference to the need to enslave Africans because they were "impervious to the tropical sun". They all declared their hostility towards the northern states and their desire to end slavery or refusal to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act-calling many northern states out individually for disdain.

Just skim through the third volume of Shelby Foote's History of the Civil War for quotes from southern leaders as the war wound down. Declarations of never wanting to live in the same nation as the "Yankees and their negro allies" and other racist proclamations are rampant and easy to find.

So to those who desire, for whatever reason, to try to re-write history to declare that the Civil War was not about slavery, stow it. It doesn't jive with reality.