• m_f@midwest.socialEnglish
    14·
    24 hours ago

    There’s a joke I’ve heard, “In middle school, you learn the Civil War was about slavery. In high school, you learn it was about states rights. In college, you learn it was really about slavery”.

    Alternative form:

    • bigFab@lemmy.worldEnglish
      01·
      13 hours ago

      As a non american I’m curious about these events. I see it as a fact the war ended slavery, but isn’t anyone bothered about the winning heroes having used slaves themselves their whole life up until then? More than heroes I see them as ‘‘I’m not bad anymore’’ and demonizing their foes as a very hipocrite act.

      If I was dealing drugs my whole life I wouldn’t raise my voice too high to condemn other dealers just because I recently quit myself, although seems like for some works pretty well.

      • piccolo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        6 hours ago

        Many states has abolished slavery decades prior. It was highly debated at the formation of the country. It gets weirder that Thomas Jefferson was anti slavery while owning 600 slaves and as president, he abolitioned the international slave trade and advocated to end slavery all togather, but was against voluntary manumission. People are… complicated, often self serving but can recognize how the system is horrible…

      • FooBarrington@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 hours ago

        If you do something bad, and then you stop doing something bad, it’s not hypocritical to tell others to stop doing the bad thing. It’s hypocritical to not stop, and then tell others to stop.

        • bigFab@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          4 hours ago

          We agree on that ethically it is right to ask others to stop doing wrong like you did. For me it’s different though asking while pointing with a gun. That is hypocrite.

          • m_f@midwest.socialEnglish
            2·
            3 hours ago

            If someone is doing something really bad to you, and someone else came over with a gun to stop them, would you stop the person saving you and purity-check them first?

            Slavery was also much less prevalent in the North, and abolished completely ~55 years before the civil war. It’s not really equivalent. To borrow your drug dealing analogy (though it’s a loose one at best), it’s kind of like your local weed dealer helping to remove an unabashed fentanyl dealer from the community

    • Wogi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      22 hours ago

      To join the Confederacy the state had to enshrine slavery in it’s constitution. It was actually giving up the right to choose.

      It was slavery or union.

      The South went out of it’s way to make the war about slavery.

    • fsxylo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      23 hours ago

      State’s rights to force the northern states to return runaway slaves. Can’t forget that part.

      • EleventhHour@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        22 hours ago

        “How dare you disrespect our sovereignty by exercising your own! And during a Civil War that we started over this very issue, no less!”

        This country has been half dogshit-brained fuckbag since the first European “explorer” landed here. And while I’m sure, like any society, Native Americans had their share of colorful characters, we’ll hardly hear of them due to the whole cultural erasure which followed the landing of the aforementioned European “explorers”.

        “What’s so great about discovery? It’s a violent penetrative act that scars what it explores. What you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world.”

        — Dr. Ian Malcom, Jurassic Park

  • lath@lemmy.worldEnglish
    01·
    23 hours ago

    I too watched a documentary on the US civil war. I learned it was about power, greed and fear. The southerners had complete control over their slaves and losing them meant becoming completely dependant on northern machinery. They likened this to becoming slaves themselves, which was obviously horrifying considering their own behaviour in this regard. So war was their only option, not only to maintain and then grow their properties, but also to destroy or take over the northern industrial capabilities.

    Sounds evil, which it was, but at the same time it was a matter of survival, as proven after the war when many plantations and businesses using the former slaves collapsed.

    The war happened because the southerners had nothing to lose and everything to gain from it. Or at least, that’s how the documentary portrayed it.