• themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Ok. I’m not a Confederate defender at all. Check my comment history if you want some context on my politics.

    But you’re wrong about the North fighting to stop slavery. The North fought the war to keep the Union together. The Secessionists tried to leave because they wanted to enforce slavery everywhere. There were new states joining the Union, and the secessionists didn’t like that they were given the option to choose whether or not to keep slavery legal. The Secessionists didn’t like that northern states like Wisconsin and Vermont were freeing escaped slaves rather than returning them per federal law.

    So the South was fighting for slavery.

    And the South was fighting against state’s rights. That’s a thing most people get backwards. The only state’s right the secessionists were fighting for was the right for states to secede.

    But the North wasn’t fighting to stop slavery. Lincoln gave speeches in support of abolition, but his presidential campaign was explicit in his intent to keep the status quo and let new states decide for themselves. The emancipation proclamation was two years into the war, and it was many years after the war had ended when all the slaves were eventually freed.

    That doesn’t mean that the North was fighting to keep slavery. It’s just that the political climate was complicated, and there were a lot of Northern slave owners that Lincoln needed to placate. It doesn’t make Lincoln a bad guy, or tarnish his legacy. He did indeed win the war and free the slaves, and he was murdered for his efforts.

    The North never accepted the concept that the Confederate States weren’t still part of the USA, so it also wouldn’t be accurate to say the North “invaded” the South at all. We should be precise in our language.

    Slaver terrorists attempted a rebellion because they wanted slavery in all American territories, and were afraid they would eventually be prohibited from keeping slaves. American soldiers put down the rebellion and kept the Union intact. This also helped abolitionists to gain enough political ground and popular support to eventually free the slaves.

    • BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      the history of the united states is so fascinating. thank you for this comment. also i hope the head examination went well 😂 if you took up 4am’s offer

    • camr_on@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I appreciate your historical accuracy in the face of people who don’t care about any level of discourse beyond ‘South bad North good end of subject’. Being accurate about the nuances of the war and its causes is not the same as defending the Confederacy