Cyraa

“There’s not enough troops in the Army, to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our schools and into our homes.” Yep. Sounds like State Rights for sure. At this point you aren't even disagreeing with me. You're just saying that slavery wasn't bad it was just an economical model and attempting to suppress it made the North wrong oh and did you know other people did it worse so we are totes even better than them? Also. Castration of slaves was a common practice in the south especially as a punishment for attempting to run away. FYI. Also the acre of land argument... and this is key here so pay attention. LAND ISN'T A PERSON. Of course... in the south Slaves weren't people either. They were 3/5 of a person. The north opposed slavery in general on morale grounds not because they wanted to choke the southern economy. Do you even know why the north won the war? IT WAS ECONOMY. Slavery was literally choking the southern economy dead. You know what really killed it though? England opening cotton plantations in Egypt and India and deciding they didn't need southern cotton at all anymore. Slavery as an economic system is incredibly inefficient. The north opposed slavery not because they wanted to throttle the south but because they thought it was wrong to treat a person like an object. Now they didn't necessarily want them living next door to them... baby steps. But they did want them free. You are basically trying to argue states rights because the south was having its slave economy throttled by the north because the north didn't want them to be successful. Do you understand how absurd that sounds? You are basically arguing that in a democracy if I don't like what the majority says... I just get to leave and start a new country instead.

OH. Let me check your original post... Let's see... slave rights... I don't see any mention of Economic Rights and Humanitarian rights. Nice splitting hairs there to deflect from the fact that everything I said was accurate. And Robert E Lee is still irrelevant to the discussion as the personal views and inspirations of even a leading general of the south have nothing to do with the causes of the war. If you want to argue if he was a good or morale man or if Lincoln was that would be something else but that isn't at issue here. To say that everyone in the south chose to fight for the exact same reason as everyone else is absurd. But we aren't arguing personal choices we are arguing societal base line reasons for why it happened. You are basically arguing that important Person X in the South wasn't bad and fought for X reasons not Y so no one fought for Y reason and the defining reason for why the south was fighting wasn't bad it was this persons. That is utter nonsense. As for lumping everyone under the same banner. I never did that. I was pointing out fundamental paradigms of the south in terms of economy and politics and showing how that led to all of this and how it is all related to the underlying slave mechanic, WHICH others where arguing it wasn't about at all or at least only as a side issue of no real import. As for being liberal or a SJW or some other bullshoot. Sorry. Texas here. I believe in gun rights and the death penalty and even states rights as defined under the Constitution of the United States. I don't believe in revisionist bullshoot history where suddenly we didn't fight a war over slavery that just wound up being all the things it was dealing with. This was a key transitional moment in history and the South was on the wrong side of it. If the South had won that war they still wouldn't have slaves anymore today. Political and economic pressures that would have been exerted on them to change their ways would have certainly guaranteed a change in this policy. Evidence: Slavery of the sort practiced by the South does not exist anywhere in the world today. To say that the fundamental causes of the war at the time where anything else is to ignore this fundamental paradigm shift in history and its greater impact on the world at large. In the end though all of this is irrelevant to the subject of the thread. And I point you to my original posts ending that actually talks about that. If you are arguing that symbols should only be banned because it is morally bad I would then ask you, whose morals are we using as a base? Which is why I presented my argument that the only way to rationally do that (in my opinion) is to find that which is offensive to significant portions of the population. I also stated that the offensive nature of the flag doesn't extend from what it represented during the Civil War necessarily but how it was used to represent what came after. That is my key point. Everything either of us has said about the Civil War is pointless in regards to this thread, the key point is that the flag is offensive because of what it represented AFTER the war was over and what it meant to the peoples subjected to Jim Crow and exclusionary laws with the old CSA battle flag being the ultimate expression of that to many.

So... you say it was never about the rights of Slaves... and then you say it was about taking slaves west. Which was in fact about slave rights. Why didn't we want slaves in the west or want them in the west as was the case with the south? Well it all has to do with this thing called the Senate. You can't pass a law if it can't pass the Senate and each state gets two reps in it... so as long as you have as many free states as you do slave states you maintain the status quo. As soon as you start having more free states than slave states you start having to worry about the slaves being freed. Why did we want them free? Because it wasn't moral according to abolitionists and they should have rights. Thus it was about slave rights. That is what the Civil War was about. The loss of political power that would ultimately result in the freeing of the slaves... so while the Civil War on its face wasn't about slavery, when you dig into the actual issues behind the issues it really was. People will go on about slave states in the west or States Rights etc... but what they always fail to mention is why those things were important in the first place to the north and south. The reason why was slavery. Also... as to your PBS article... literally the third sentence says, "In fact, it was the economics of slavery and political control of that system that was central to the conflict." Whether you or I or anyone else finds the confederate battle flag offensive is irrelevant. It matters if some large minority or majority of people find it that way with real historical reason. Now if the CSA still existed maybe you would have a point. But you have to look at the historical context for how it was used after the CSA ceased to exist. And that was largely as a symbol of defiance of the North and the freeing of the slaves and in support of things like separate but equal and Jim Crow laws. That is inherently racist regardless of what the CSA and the Civil War were about or stood for. Further the information about Lincoln and Robert E. Lee is irrelevant to the discussion. The private actions and thoughts of individuals on a national level are largely irrelevant to what happened on that national level. Lincoln did believe that slavery was morally wrong. He didn't know what to do about it. He did suggest sending them to colonize Liberia. Robert E Lee did take that to heart and send many there. How is that relevant to the discussion at hand? It isn't.