Black Conservatives in the TEA Party Movement, and the Stupidity of the Race Card

[A Black Falcon]

The Civil War was not fought over slavery, Falcon. I can't believe that myth is still around.

Before this I haven't thought that you were racist, but you seriously believe that? Really? I guess it could just be generic Southern apology instead of racism, but the ties are so close that there's no way for someone saying what you did there to get away from the charge. Sorry, but it's true. You talk of "looking at the actual history", but you sure aren't looking at history very closely if you believe that kind of thing.

"Slavery wasn't the main cause of the Civil War" is something that has been said by many historians, but they're mostly Southern historians, and they were either trying to deceive or were misinformed, I'd say. That thinking is a lot less common now than it used to be because the real story has come out, and the old denials and excuses have fallen one by one.

On a related note, President Grant has seen a serious upswing in popularity in recent years for similar reasons. While for many years Reconstruction had been seriously maligned by those same Southern historians, called ineffective, lots of mentions of those awful "Carpetbaggers", etc, etc, in recent years more study has shown that no, in fact reconstruction WAS getting somewhere. Black people were actually elected in Southern states. Once the Republican Party abandoned reconstruction in 1876 for electoral victory (look up that incredibly contested election for the details), that wouldn't happen again for nearly a century in many parts of the south. Grant did have many corrupt people in his administration, but that wasn't his fault, and reconstruction was a good, if ultimately unsuccessful because it was ended early, effort. Grant isn't called one of our worst presidents quite as often anymore I think...

Confederate apology is looked on very dimly by most black (and liberal) leaders for a very good reason, it's excusing slavery and racism. In fact, only white Southerners believe that anything other than slavery caused the Civil War. You won't find many people outside of the South saying things like that, because they aren't true. Why, then, do so many white Southerners insist that it was a "glorious cause" and try to deny the links to the only thing that caused the war? I'm not sure, but to theorize...

-Guilt -- admit it and you have to admit your heritage and history of slavery and racism against other humans. Deny and you can keep pretending that it wasn't so bad.
-Continuing racism -- As I said in my last post, white Southerners are almost certainly the most racist block of people in the country. While most white Southerners probably don't want slavery back, they don't like black people very much, so who really minds THAT much what we did...

I'm sure there are some other factors, but I think that those are some of hte most important ones. (Oh, first, as a note, yes, there is a lot of racism in the north too, no question. Absolutely. Quite a lot of it, and there always has been. It's just worse in the South.)

Really, what's crazy is that they still won't admit the obvious truth... get over it already, admit it, and get past it. One of the major things keeping the Confederacy active as an issue is that a lot of white Southerners still won't really admit that racism, even slavery, is wrong. Sure, they might make a few motions, but then they do things like the Virginia Governor just did and reveal the racism behind it that perhaps even they won't admit to themselves.

I mean, here's the truth: Most of the rest of America (outside of the black community) got over the Civil War back in the late 1800s. Only the South is keeping that memory alive, and in a very hateful way...

The fact is that every other "reason" for southern secession was an excuse that would never have caused secession without the key issue, slavery, that was behind all of them. The founders saw this from day one, too. The Constitution itself had a compromise with slavery in it because they valued unity at that moment over division, but they knew that they were just putting off the problem, not solving it. The first half of the 1800s was then consumed with the debate. Anyone who seriously thinks that any state would have seceeded without slavery being the driving issue is not looking at actual history, they are looking at a twisted vision of events that they wish happened so that they can come up with reasons to celebrate their heritage instead of be ashamed for it for the horrible things they did and the horrible reasoning that was behind it.


In my studies in history for the past few years, actually, I've done a lot of research in some related issues to this, namely that of Japan and how it will not admit what it did in World War II (and a bit on how Turkey is the same way with the Armenian Genocide) versus Germany, who have seriously taken just about every imaginable step to try to make up for what they did in World War II. Somehow comparing it to civil rights in America didn't come to me before this thread here, so I'm actually kind of happy the issue came up, it's a fascinating comparison...

I do mention that America has a very hard time admitting to the bad things it has done in my paper, but I just reference it with Vietnam (where many people still will not admit that it was a mistake and that we could never have won, insanely), not the Civil War and continuing Southern denial of its causes. Eh, you can't mention everything. :)

(On that note, I'm just about finished with my masters' thesis, on said Japan and its refusal to admit its history issue... a bit over 77 double-spaced pages now, not including notes. :))

First off, the idea that Lincoln supported racial equality is something that needs to end. It's been proven that Lincoln thought that blacks were inferior to whites in terms of physical and mental abilities. In a debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858, Lincoln said that he believed that black people could not equal themselves to whites (Woods, 2007, pg. 75). In his mind, whites and blacks could not live together in terms of "social and political equality" (Woods, 2007, pg. 75). To add more fuel to the fire, Lincoln did nothing in Illinois to "challenge the state's treatment of blacks, who could not vote, testify in court against whites, serve on juries, or attend a public school funded in part by their own tax dollars" (Woods, 2007, pg. 76).

Absolutely true, most Northerners didn't like black people. I would never say that just because the North opposed slavery their position on black rights was good, it was most certainly not. Think for instance of the riots in New York City during the war, when the Irish got mad that black freedom would mean black people coming in and taking their jobs... or things like how Lincoln and so many others did not think that blacks and whites could ever be equal.

The thing is though, even if they thought that black people were inferior, they thought that they should not be enslaved. It was a moral issue (despite that parts of the bible support slavery, opponents used other parts (mostly the New Testament I imagine) to say that it was morally wrong), a religious issue, a policy issue... so yes, most Northerners were racist, but they didn't like slavery that much.

The slavery issue was the defining, and most important by many orders of magnitude, issue in American politics for decades before the Civil War finally broke out. In fact the Civil War almost broke out in 1850, but a compromise was reached that delayed it again. It might have actually have been better to fight it then, there was less industrialization in the South so the South might have lost faster... and those compromises always ended up giving more to the South than the North, too, for no long-term gain other than putting off the problem.

Anyway, the Republican party was founded in part to oppose slavery. That's why the South seceded, because they thought that Lincoln would do away with slavery if they stayed in the country with him in charge. It probably wasn't true, he was cautious and probably would not have done that. Look at how hard it was to convince him to free the slaves even during the war... but we'll never know how justified their fears really were, of course, because South Carolina seceded almost immediately.

However, finding broad-based support for a huge war just to stop slavery might have been tough, so it is true that during the war in the north Union was emphasized over Stop Slavery. That really was just a cover, though. Slavery was the real issue... but they used "Union" as the cry because "End Slavery" just wasn't popular enough in the North. It was popular, but not enough to drive the whole war effort I believe. Either way though, that was just the propaganda... the political reality that had caused the war was much, much more clear, and slavery was the only issue behind it.