RE: It's a Great Day in South Carolina
July 9, 2015 at 9:23 pm
(This post was last modified: July 9, 2015 at 9:25 pm by Thumpalumpacus.)
(July 9, 2015 at 8:34 pm)Brakeman Wrote: Well, yes that is only partially true. Most confederates did not own slaves. That was relegated to a smaller, wealthy minority. Most Confederates fought to uphold their bible beliefs, that "if god said slavery is ok, then enslaving people that you feel racially superior to is a god given right." It was over the bible that "Son fought against son" not over politics or "state's rights."
Yes, I know that most Confederate citizens didn't own slaves. Most Americans don't own stock in Halliburton, either. Does that mean that the 2003 invasion of Iraq wasn't disingenuous?
Read the Confederate Constitution. You'll find that the slavery was protected by law. And if you read history, you'll find that the Confederacy seceded because it was being pinched off into a political minority by geographical facts: slavery was not acceptable in the northern plains, but the Desert Southwest prevented its expansion to the Pacific. Because of that brute fact, Southern states understood that they would soon be outvoted in Congress as to the legitimacy of the institution of slavery. The Presidential campaign of 1860 was about that for this reason.
The Confederate foot soldiers were certainly sold a line of bullshit about why they should fight, no doubt -- but just because they didn't own any slaves themselves doesn't mean that the bullshit wasn't bullshit. It only means that the soldiery was naive. The Bible was the prop, not the raison d'etre.
