White supremacists and counter protesters clash in Charlottesville

[Rahul]

My mistake. I miss interpreted what you wrote earlier to take it as meaning diaries that were written after the war rather than diaries which remained after the war which I now assume is what you meant. 

That being said, I'm still not sure your earlier point carries all that much weight in light of your statement above, i.e. you doubt very many Confederate soldiers were against slavery. 

I mean you can try to define it however you like, but like many wars, neither the North nor the South wanted to go to war. And there was ample opportunity for the war to be avoided if the South got on board with abolishing slavery. But instead the South decided screw you, we'll form our own country rather than back down on the slavery thing and what'd ya know a war broke out. So whether the diaries of the soldiers explicitly state it or not, when the citizens armed themselves and went to war, they were doing so fundamentally over slavery. 

And honestly, I think those that hold a similar perspective on it to your own are part of the root of the issues we're facing today. That whole 'symbols of the confederacy are a heritage thing, not a racism thing' is a big part of this problem. And I'm not saying that every person saying that is simply lying because they don't want to admit that they're racist. Quite the opposite actually. I'm saying that if you genuinely believe that, you're wrong. Period. If you embrace those symbols as a part of your heritage, so be it, but those symbols are most definitely racist and if you choose to embrace them you are also embracing racism whether your like it or not.

I've had this discussion with guys I genuinely believe aren't racist. And they dig their heels strong into the whole you don't get it, its part of my heritage thing. To which I reply I'm German, that's my heritage. But I don't fly a Nazi flag off the back of my pickup. And honestly, I don't feel one little bit as though anyone is stepping on my ability to express my heritage because of the fact that it would be frowned upon socially if I were to fly a nazi flag off the back of my pickup.

Even though its part of my heritage, I don't fly a nazi flag because I don't agree with what it stood for. Some of the people I know from the South really seem to struggle with understanding that.

I've already said that I believe Confederate monuments should come down even if the National Guard needs to be the ones who do it.  So I'm not really sure what you are arguing with me for.  Historical facts are historical facts though.  However, today, with all the white supremacy and violence we are seeing, we all must denounce it and remove Confederate monuments because they seem to be a lightning rod for their violence.  Guess what?  I've never even owned a confederate flag.  None of them.  And there are quite a few.

Back to you saying the southern citizens armed themselves and went to war... the Confederacy didn't want a war.  They sent a peace delegation to Lincoln, who refused to see them.  The South in no way wanted to fight the Northern states.  New York alone had 4 times the industrial output of all 11 of the states that would eventually take part in the Confederacy combined.  The Northern states also controlled the shipping and had much more people than the South.

Lincoln is the one that decided that the South could not go and there would be a war.  Then and only then did the final 4 states secede and join the Confederacy.  Only then did 99% of the people that would eventually fight on the Confederate side take up arms.

But to suggest that it was because the South wouldn't get onboard with abolishing slavery.  Oh boy.  Wow, ok how late is it?  Ok.  Of course slavery is horrible.  I truly wish the United States had abolished it as soon as we won our independence.  But, unfortunately we didn't.  The Northern states never really had a lot of slaves, mainly because of their climate.  The cash crops that made slavery so profitable for the South could not be grown in the North.  Most Northern states, but not all, gradually illegalized slavery in their states as the decades passed leading up to the Civil War.  Some of the Northern slave owners freed their slaves, or allowed them to age out of slavery (many state laws freed the existing slaves after they reached a certain age), but a heck of a lot of them sold them down south to the Southern states before they let them go free and they lost that wealth.

The rhetoric got really bad leading up to the war.  In 1830 there were twice as many abolition groups in the South as there were in the North.  By 1860 there were NO abolition groups in the South.  None.  That's how bad the screaming match and inflamed passions got.  The Northern abolitions, who were for the most part, and at their core, religious zealots, demanded immediate, complete, uncompensated abolition.

That quite frankly was insane.  That was guaranteed to start some serious shit.

Slavery was the biggest financial holding in the entire country.  The worth of the slaves held by the South was worth more than all industry in the entire country.  And some religious zealots in New England wanted all that wealth to vaporize.

The number one reason that most wars start among humanity is about wealth and power.  Those two things are practically the same thing.  If you have one, you have the other.

Not only was it a crazy idea to expect anybody to just throw away all that wealth, but here's the thing.  Slavery was legal in the United States.  It was even tacitly supported in the Constituion by the three fifths compromise clause IN the Constitution.

But this small core of abolitionists in the North, who in no way shared the view of the majority of Northerners, didn't give a shit.  They even treated John Brown like a saint after he was executed.  Have you read about that guy?  He was a stone cold psycho.  Yeah, wanted to free the slaves, very noble that.  But that's the only thing noble about anything about that dude.  He wanted the slaves to rise up and kill everybody in the South.  Man, Woman, and child.  The dude even chopped up some random people with a sword.

I mean can you imagine if some white guy traveled to Ferguson today and tried to convince all the African Americans in that city to slaughter all the white people that lived there?  Even chopped up a random white father and son walking down the stree with an axe?  I'm pretty sure everybody today would disagree with the dude and call him insane.  Back then the abolitionists wrote a song about John Brown's body and made it a triumpant song about taking out the South.  That's how crazy everyone got.  The South was just as bad.  Passions got really inflamed beyond any kind of reasonable discourse.

History is messy, it was full of complicated ideas, and random things going on all over the place.  But it wasn't near as simple as a lot of people make it out to be.