What happened? The Confederate flag ISN'T racist. Learn your history.
Read all of this so that you don't look dumb if you are in fact trying to tell me I'm racist LOL.
Less than 5% of the whites in the South owned slaves. Fully 3/4's of the white people of the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery or the plantation system.
The Civil War had deeper underpinnings than just racism. There was also a states rights issue. The north and south didn't split exclusively on slavery in much the same way the Colonists didn't split from the British exclusively because of a Tea Tax. There were other reasons.
The Southern States noticed that they were losing their sovereignty, for one. They also saw Lincoln as heavily biased toward the Northern States.
But, fast forward to the modern world, where the flag, and the racism aspect of the Civil War, has made for some epic controversy-mongering. (Especially among people like Sharpton and Jackson, the nation's #1 and #2 race-baiting camera whores).
If the flag is racist, why have black Southerners fought to display the Confederate Flag (and have been forced to defend their reasoning)? It isn't because those people don't get it or because their asphalt-thick. They aren't. They simply see a completely different meaning in the Flag than the politically-correct conventional wisdom.
The history of the Confederacy, and indeed the history of the Confederate flag, go much deeper than "it's just about slavery." Far as I know, there hasn't been a country on earth whose entire history can be burned down to five words.
Etc etc. Too long, didn't read.
The war wasn't based on slavery.
Actually, Lincoln didn't put much effort into ensuring slavery was abolished.
He truly didn't base his actions 100% into ridding the country of slavery.
He allowed a few states / areas in the North to keep their slaves.
He wanted to keep them on his side to keep the number up.
Taxes, etc. Most major political problems, were far more greater than slavery.
The flag stood for the South, not slavery, being said that. Slavery wasn't even the TIP of the ice burg.
The South was rich, and the North wasn't as rich.
Want to know something?
The North and South didn't go to war to end slavery. It wasn't even a major issue to them.
Pres. Abraham Lincoln was personally against slavery, but in his first inaugural, he made it clear that placating the Southern states was more important. Quoting himself in other speeches, he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
Fun fact~!
Confederate General Robert E. Lee freed all of his slaves prior to the start of the war. That act by the military leader of the South truly displays that for the Confederacy, the war was only about states’ rights and a just rebellion against tyranny–not about slavery.
Northern General U.S. Grant continued to hold a slave for nearly a year after the war. In fact, it took an act of Congress to finally free the man from Grant’s possession.
Northern General Tecumseh Sherman was arrested many times for brutally abusing several of his slaves.
Lincoln’s War (otherwise known as the Civil War), was much less about freeing oppressed blacks and much more about the federal government exerting complete control over all citizens. Lincoln’s actions were a direct assault upon the wishes of our founding fathers. Lincoln cared very little for the rule of law, as evidenced by his numerous suspensions of U.S. Constitutional rights.
If you're saying the south was "bad" then you're obviously missing the whole situation when it came to the foundation of America.
America, not the CSA, killed thousands and thousands of Native Americans.
Too bad you're too stupid to realize that history itself, along with hundreds of civilizations, was built on slavery.
Stop being a pansy. Jews went through more s**t then blacks would even imagine.
Africans sold their own, most of our founding fathers owned slaves.
America received a small percentage of slaves traded.
Hell, even the North had slaves. Most of New Jersey didn't free their slaves until the very end of the war.
Greece, Rome, Egypt, China, Inca, Aztec, Native Americans, India, and many others had slaves.
May I say, most of those people were not white.
It's not entirely about a race being superior, it's mainly about taking advantage of people deemed weaker than those holding them, hence the reason why they were slaves.
I'm not just talking about blacks, I'm talking about people in general.
People are weak. People allow others to take advantage.
It's been proven throughout history.
It's a pity really.
A good quote from a very smart man-
"I am the Confederate Flag of America.
I was born in 1861. I represented many Americans of which were many colors, contrary to modern day beliefs. I am hated by people who don’t know me or what I stood for. I was not designed as a hate object, though many people look at me this way today. I was not born to represent white sheets and shaved heads. I was designed to support state rights and soldiers who wore gray. So don’t hate me because of what certain groups have used me for. Just remember at some point in time I represented each and every one of you, because I was an American symbol, and represented you, no matter what race you are.
I am the Confederate Flag of America.
The Confederate Battle Flag in the past few decades has been waved by some very racist groups. The flag represents the Confederate States of America and the proud nation that once was.
It is part of the culture, history, and heritage of the South. Many religious symbols have also been associated with hate groups. Should we also ban the cross? Lee and most of the Generals in the South did not own slaves or feel they were fighting the war over slavery.
Lee and Jackson were gentleman and fine soldiers who were fighting in "The War of Northern Aggression". Lee and the rest of his men would not be in any of the hate groups of today. It is a crime that such a great & noble flag has become a symbol of hate & racism to so many people.
Do not think of this flag as a symbol of racial hate but as noble symbol of a past when a proud Southern Military existed. Do not ban the Confederate Battle Flag because hate groups wave it at rallies. The flag is not the problem! Hate and racism is the problem. The flag has nothing to with hate and everything to do with a proud Southern History."
Another lovely explanation
"This is well-reasoned document concerning the reasons the Civil War occurred.
Many people think the Civil War of 1860-1865 was fought over one issue alone, slavery. Nothing could actually be further from the truth. The War Between the States began because the South demanded States' rights and were not getting them.
The Congress at that time heavily favored the industrialized northern states to the point of demanding that the South sell is cotton and other raw materials only to the factories in the north, rather than to other countries. The Congress also taxed the finished materials that the northern industries produced heavily, making finished products that the South wanted, unaffordable. The Civil War should not have occurred. If the Northern States and their representatives in Congress had only listened to the problems of the South, and stopped these practices that were almost like the taxation without representation of Great Britain, then the Southern states would not have seceded and the war would not have occurred.
I know for many years, we have been taught that the Civil War was all about the abolition of slavery, but this truly did not become a major issue, with the exception of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, until after the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, when Abraham Lincoln decided to free the slaves in the Confederate States in order to punish those states for continuing the war effort. The war had been in progress for two years by that time.
Most southerners did not even own slaves nor did they own plantations. Most of them were small farmers who worked their farms with their families. They were fighting for their rights. They were fighting to maintain their lifestyle and their independence the way they wanted to without the United States Government dictating to them how they should behave.
Why are we frequently taught then, that the Civil War, War of Northern Aggression, War Between the States, or whatever you want to call it, was solely about slavery? That is because the history books are usually written by the winners of a war and this war was won by the Union. However, after following my family around since I was just a year old to Civil War Living History scenarios in Gettysburg and elsewhere, I have listened to both sides of the story, from those portraying historical figures, both Union and Confederate. Through listening to these people and also reading many different books, including some of the volumes of The Official Records of the Civil War, Death in September, The Insanity of It All, Every Day Life During the Civil War, and many others, I have come to the conclusion that the Civil War was about much more than abolishing the institution of slavery.
It was more about preserving the United States and protecting the rights of the individual, the very tenets upon which this country was founded. I personally think that the people who profess that the Civil War was only fought about slavery have not read their history books. I really am glad that slavery was abolished, but I don't think it should be glorified as being the sole reason the Civil War was fought. There are so many more issues that people were intensely passionate about at the time. Slavery was one of them, but it was not the primary cause of the war. The primary causes of the war were economics and states' rights.
Slavery was a part of those greater issues, but it was not the reason the Southern States seceded from the Union, nor fought the Civil War. It certainly was a Southern institution that was part of the economic system of the plantations, and because of that, it was part and parcel of the economic reasons that the South formed the Confederacy. The economic issue was one of taxation and being able to sell cotton and other raw materials where the producers wanted to, rather than where they were forced to, and at under inflated prices. Funny, it sounds very much like the reason we broke from Great Britain to begin with. The South was within their rights, but there should have been another way to solve the problem. If they had been willing to listen to Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the war could have been avoided. Lincoln had a plan to gradually free the slaves without it further hurting the plantation owners. He also had a plan to allow them to sell their products anywhere they wanted to and at a fair price. They did not choose to listen to the President, however, so they formed the Confederacy and the Civil War began. "
Over the years the battle flag has been used in racist groups. Keep in mind that the KKK also flies the American flag.
The American flag we support has been flown over slave ships. Not one slave ship ever had a confederate battle flag over it.
The American flag has more blood on it than the rebel flag. Under the American flag, hundreds and thousands of native Americans lost their lives.
Comparing the nazi flag to the confederate flag is illogical. If any flag can be compared to the Nazi flag, it's surly the American flag. Keep in mind that under the American flag, many native Americans were murdered while settling the west. Keep in mind that it was an American flag that flew over those slave ships.
By that logic, lets condemn the Japanese flag, because under the Japanese flag, millions of Chinese died. Does anyone recall the nanking of China? What about Pearl Harbor? How about lets talk about shaming some British heritage! Huh? Does anyone here recall he enslavement of the Irish? Many Irish to be exact? How about Greece, how about them? What about Rome? Now it's Italy obviously, but their history was bloody. Keep in mind that Romans made their slaves fight to the death.
Lincoln was willing to let the union and confederacy keep their slaves if the confederacy rejoined the union. Lincoln used the getting rid of slaves as a punishment to the south later when political tensions got bad, and he ran out of options. It was a desperate move. I personally hate slavery, but Lincoln didn't plan on freeing them in good will at first. He also earlier didn't see blacks as politically equal to white men.
Things you didn't know about Lincoln.
1. Lincoln wasn’t an abolitionist.
Lincoln did believe that slavery was morally wrong, but there was one big problem: It was sanctioned by the highest law in the land, the Constitution. The nation’s founding fathers, who also struggled with how to address slavery, did not explicitly write the word “slavery” in the Constitution, but they did include key clauses protecting the institution, including a fugitive slave clause and the three-fifths clause, which allowed Southern states to count slaves for the purposes of representation in the federal government. In a three-hour speech in Peoria, Illinois, in the fall of 1854, Lincoln presented more clearly than ever his moral, legal and economic opposition to slavery—and then admitted he didn’t know exactly what should be done about it within the current political system.
Abolitionists, by contrast, knew exactly what should be done about it: Slavery should be immediately abolished, and freed slaves should be incorporated as equal members of society. They didn’t care about working within the existing political system, or under the Constitution, which they saw as unjustly protecting slavery and slave owners. Leading abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called the Constitution “a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell,” and went so far as to burn a copy at a Massachusetts rally in 1854. Though Lincoln saw himself as working alongside the abolitionists on behalf of a common anti-slavery cause, he did not count himself among them. Only with emancipation, and with his support of the eventual 13th Amendment, would Lincoln finally win over the most committed abolitionists.
2. Lincoln didn’t believe blacks should have the same rights as whites.
Though Lincoln argued that the founding fathers’ phrase “All men are created equal” applied to blacks and whites alike, this did not mean he thought they should have the same social and political rights. His views became clear during an 1858 series of debates with his opponent in the Illinois race for U.S. Senate, Stephen Douglas, who had accused him of supporting “negro equality.” In their fourth debate, at Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858, Lincoln made his position clear. “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,” he began, going on to say that he opposed blacks having the right to vote, to serve on juries, to hold office and to intermarry with whites. What he did believe was that, like all men, blacks had the right to improve their condition in society and to enjoy the fruits of their labor. In this way they were equal to white men, and for this reason slavery was inherently unjust.
Like his views on emancipation, Lincoln’s position on social and political equality for African-Americans would evolve over the course of his presidency. In the last speech of his life, delivered on April 11, 1865, he argued for limited black suffrage, saying that any black man who had served the Union during the Civil War should have the right to vote.
3. Lincoln thought colonization could resolve the issue of slavery.
For much of his career, Lincoln believed that colonization—or the idea that a majority of the African-American population should leave the United States and settle in Africa or Central America—was the best way to confront the problem of slavery. His two great political heroes, Henry Clay and Thomas Jefferson, had both favored colonization; both were slave owners who took issue with aspects of slavery but saw no way that blacks and whites could live together peaceably. Lincoln first publicly advocated for colonization in 1852, and in 1854 said that his first instinct would be “to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia” (the African state founded by the American Colonization Society in 1821).
Nearly a decade later, even as he edited the draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in August of 1862, Lincoln hosted a delegation of freed slaves at the White House in the hopes of getting their support on a plan for colonization in Central America. Given the “differences” between the two races and the hostile attitudes of whites towards blacks, Lincoln argued, it would be “better for us both, therefore, to be separated.” Lincoln’s support of colonization provoked great anger among black leaders and abolitionists, who argued that African-Americans were as much natives of the country as whites, and thus deserved the same rights. After he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln never again publicly mentioned colonization, and a mention of it in an earlier draft was deleted by the time the final proclamation was issued in January 1863.
4. Emancipation was a military policy.
As much as he hated the institution of slavery, Lincoln didn’t see the Civil War as a struggle to free the nation’s 4 million slaves from bondage. Emancipation, when it came, would have to be gradual, and the important thing to do was to prevent the Southern rebellion from severing the Union permanently in two. But as the Civil War entered its second summer in 1862, thousands of slaves had fled Southern plantations to Union lines, and the federal government didn’t have a clear policy on how to deal with them. Emancipation, Lincoln saw, would further undermine the Confederacy while providing the Union with a new source of manpower to crush the rebellion.
In July 1862 the president presented his draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. Secretary of State William Seward urged him to wait until things were going better for the Union on the field of battle, or emancipation might look like the last gasp of a nation on the brink of defeat. Lincoln agreed and returned to edit the draft over the summer. On September 17 the bloody Battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the opportunity he needed. He issued the preliminary proclamation to his cabinet on September 22, and it was published the following day. As a cheering crowd gathered at the White House, Lincoln addressed them from a balcony: “I can only trust in God I have made no mistake … It is now for the country and the world to pass judgment on it.”
5. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t actually free all of the slaves.
Since Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a military measure, it didn’t apply to border slave states like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, all of which had remained loyal to the Union. Lincoln also exempted selected areas of the Confederacy that had already come under Union control in hopes of gaining the loyalty of whites in those states. In practice, then, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t immediately free a single slave, as the only places it applied were places where the federal government had no control—the Southern states currently fighting against the Union.
Despite its limitations, Lincoln’s proclamation marked a crucial turning point in the evolution of Lincoln’s views of slavery, as well as a turning point in the Civil War itself. By war’s end, some 200,000 black men would serve in the Union Army and Navy, striking a mortal blow against the institution of slavery and paving the way for its eventual abolition by the 13th Amendment.
Some comments about modern s**t.
Wanna play a race card? STFU.
"Democrats are still pro-slavery, in the form of keeping blacks on the welfare plantation. Welfare is the New Slavery and the Democrats have figured out that they can buy black votes as long as they continuoe to be race arsonists and as long as black "leaders" like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton continue to pimp black votes out to the highest bidder. Pimps and race arsonists do not help the black community, they exploit it perpetuate the racism and poverty and divisiveness for their own political and financial gain. Shame on them. These three guys weren't "liberals' in the modern sense of the word, they were Liberals in the European sense of the word, like Adam Smith and John Locke were Liberals...they were what are now called Libertarians, since Leftists have taken over the "liberal" moniker."
"Learn your history, Lincoln was a republican when republicans were liberal. He was a racist who wanted to send Blacks back to Africa because he didn't like them. The war was not over slavery. The CSA( Confederate States of America) was todays Tea Party, and Lincoln was Obama. The civil war was over states rights and Nothern greed. The first State to legalize slavery was Massachusetts. It pisses me off when people only listen to the Norths " version" of the war. Lincoln does NOT belong on that list."
"People are ignorant about history. The Democrats use welfare as their current form of oppressing people and keeping them down."
Another good point:
Anyone who seeks an offensive flag needs to look no farther than the thirteen-stripe United States flag.
Under that flag, many thousands of Africans were transported to slavery in the New World.
No Confederate-flagged ship ever made a slaving-run.
Under that flag, atrocities were committed against noncombatant civilians during the 1860s -- atrocities to rank with those committed by the Germans and Japanese during World War II.
No Confederate unit ever committed atrocities against noncombatants.
Under that flag, Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11, expelling all Jews from parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
The Confederate States of America never practiced anti-Semitism. To the contrary -- the Confederate forces included Jewish officers and enlisted men, and from the beginning, the Confederate cabinet included Judah Philip Benjamin, a Jew. (The first Jewish US cabinet member, Oscar Straus, served under Theodore Roosevelt.)
Under that flag, the military services were segregated until after World War II.
Confederate military units saw many different ethnicities – including thousands of blacks – serving cheek-by-jowl and receiving the same pay and allowances.
Under that flag, Native Americans/Indians were cheated, forcibly removed from their ancestral lands, and massacred wholesale.
Native Americans/Indians received no such treatment at Confederate hands. To the contrary -- Native Americans/Indians played a vital role in the Confederate Army. General Stand Watie, a Cherokee, was the last Confederate general to sign a cease-fire with the US Army.
Under that flag, American citizens in the 1940s were forcibly removed from their homes and herded into concentration camps solely because their ancestors had been born in Japan.
The Confederate States of America never put anyone into a concentration camp based on his parents' ethnicity.
>implying that the confederate battle flag is offensive
>forgetting that under the American flag, native Americans were murdered, land stollen, Japanese American citizens were put into camps and taken from their homes, segregation was allowed and the politicians didn't do s**t till people protested, trades with terrorists, gave hitler weapons, isn't for the people or by the people.
I have over 60 confederate vetarens in my family alone. On all of the maiden sides and male sides. (My family is ******** big, and we have a big a** book that links us to s**t and we have confederate and revolutionary war letters to home) Of course they're long dead, but it was hella close in time. 150 years isn't long. When my dad was 6, his great great grandpa, a civil war vet, was still alive. He was as old as dirt, but he was still alive. He died when my dad was about 7. My family goes back till the colonization days, pretty much. Anyways, these men who fought under the confederate flag (the common seen flag is actually the battle flag though). You ******** who try to spew your uneducated bullshit are actually shitting on my family. Feel free to talk s**t about your own shitty lives, but s**t talking the confederacy, when you know nothing about the war, makes you look like a bimbo. emotion_awesome
Haha, I'm related to Jefferson Davis too. I ******** flipped when I found that out.
Read all of this so that you don't look dumb if you are in fact trying to tell me I'm racist LOL.
Less than 5% of the whites in the South owned slaves. Fully 3/4's of the white people of the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery or the plantation system.
The Civil War had deeper underpinnings than just racism. There was also a states rights issue. The north and south didn't split exclusively on slavery in much the same way the Colonists didn't split from the British exclusively because of a Tea Tax. There were other reasons.
The Southern States noticed that they were losing their sovereignty, for one. They also saw Lincoln as heavily biased toward the Northern States.
But, fast forward to the modern world, where the flag, and the racism aspect of the Civil War, has made for some epic controversy-mongering. (Especially among people like Sharpton and Jackson, the nation's #1 and #2 race-baiting camera whores).
If the flag is racist, why have black Southerners fought to display the Confederate Flag (and have been forced to defend their reasoning)? It isn't because those people don't get it or because their asphalt-thick. They aren't. They simply see a completely different meaning in the Flag than the politically-correct conventional wisdom.
The history of the Confederacy, and indeed the history of the Confederate flag, go much deeper than "it's just about slavery." Far as I know, there hasn't been a country on earth whose entire history can be burned down to five words.
Etc etc. Too long, didn't read.
The war wasn't based on slavery.
Actually, Lincoln didn't put much effort into ensuring slavery was abolished.
He truly didn't base his actions 100% into ridding the country of slavery.
He allowed a few states / areas in the North to keep their slaves.
He wanted to keep them on his side to keep the number up.
Taxes, etc. Most major political problems, were far more greater than slavery.
The flag stood for the South, not slavery, being said that. Slavery wasn't even the TIP of the ice burg.
The South was rich, and the North wasn't as rich.
Want to know something?
The North and South didn't go to war to end slavery. It wasn't even a major issue to them.
Pres. Abraham Lincoln was personally against slavery, but in his first inaugural, he made it clear that placating the Southern states was more important. Quoting himself in other speeches, he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
Fun fact~!
Confederate General Robert E. Lee freed all of his slaves prior to the start of the war. That act by the military leader of the South truly displays that for the Confederacy, the war was only about states’ rights and a just rebellion against tyranny–not about slavery.
Northern General U.S. Grant continued to hold a slave for nearly a year after the war. In fact, it took an act of Congress to finally free the man from Grant’s possession.
Northern General Tecumseh Sherman was arrested many times for brutally abusing several of his slaves.
Lincoln’s War (otherwise known as the Civil War), was much less about freeing oppressed blacks and much more about the federal government exerting complete control over all citizens. Lincoln’s actions were a direct assault upon the wishes of our founding fathers. Lincoln cared very little for the rule of law, as evidenced by his numerous suspensions of U.S. Constitutional rights.
If you're saying the south was "bad" then you're obviously missing the whole situation when it came to the foundation of America.
America, not the CSA, killed thousands and thousands of Native Americans.
Too bad you're too stupid to realize that history itself, along with hundreds of civilizations, was built on slavery.
Stop being a pansy. Jews went through more s**t then blacks would even imagine.
Africans sold their own, most of our founding fathers owned slaves.
America received a small percentage of slaves traded.
Hell, even the North had slaves. Most of New Jersey didn't free their slaves until the very end of the war.
Greece, Rome, Egypt, China, Inca, Aztec, Native Americans, India, and many others had slaves.
May I say, most of those people were not white.
It's not entirely about a race being superior, it's mainly about taking advantage of people deemed weaker than those holding them, hence the reason why they were slaves.
I'm not just talking about blacks, I'm talking about people in general.
People are weak. People allow others to take advantage.
It's been proven throughout history.
It's a pity really.
A good quote from a very smart man-
"I am the Confederate Flag of America.
I was born in 1861. I represented many Americans of which were many colors, contrary to modern day beliefs. I am hated by people who don’t know me or what I stood for. I was not designed as a hate object, though many people look at me this way today. I was not born to represent white sheets and shaved heads. I was designed to support state rights and soldiers who wore gray. So don’t hate me because of what certain groups have used me for. Just remember at some point in time I represented each and every one of you, because I was an American symbol, and represented you, no matter what race you are.
I am the Confederate Flag of America.
The Confederate Battle Flag in the past few decades has been waved by some very racist groups. The flag represents the Confederate States of America and the proud nation that once was.
It is part of the culture, history, and heritage of the South. Many religious symbols have also been associated with hate groups. Should we also ban the cross? Lee and most of the Generals in the South did not own slaves or feel they were fighting the war over slavery.
Lee and Jackson were gentleman and fine soldiers who were fighting in "The War of Northern Aggression". Lee and the rest of his men would not be in any of the hate groups of today. It is a crime that such a great & noble flag has become a symbol of hate & racism to so many people.
Do not think of this flag as a symbol of racial hate but as noble symbol of a past when a proud Southern Military existed. Do not ban the Confederate Battle Flag because hate groups wave it at rallies. The flag is not the problem! Hate and racism is the problem. The flag has nothing to with hate and everything to do with a proud Southern History."
Another lovely explanation
"This is well-reasoned document concerning the reasons the Civil War occurred.
Many people think the Civil War of 1860-1865 was fought over one issue alone, slavery. Nothing could actually be further from the truth. The War Between the States began because the South demanded States' rights and were not getting them.
The Congress at that time heavily favored the industrialized northern states to the point of demanding that the South sell is cotton and other raw materials only to the factories in the north, rather than to other countries. The Congress also taxed the finished materials that the northern industries produced heavily, making finished products that the South wanted, unaffordable. The Civil War should not have occurred. If the Northern States and their representatives in Congress had only listened to the problems of the South, and stopped these practices that were almost like the taxation without representation of Great Britain, then the Southern states would not have seceded and the war would not have occurred.
I know for many years, we have been taught that the Civil War was all about the abolition of slavery, but this truly did not become a major issue, with the exception of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, until after the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, when Abraham Lincoln decided to free the slaves in the Confederate States in order to punish those states for continuing the war effort. The war had been in progress for two years by that time.
Most southerners did not even own slaves nor did they own plantations. Most of them were small farmers who worked their farms with their families. They were fighting for their rights. They were fighting to maintain their lifestyle and their independence the way they wanted to without the United States Government dictating to them how they should behave.
Why are we frequently taught then, that the Civil War, War of Northern Aggression, War Between the States, or whatever you want to call it, was solely about slavery? That is because the history books are usually written by the winners of a war and this war was won by the Union. However, after following my family around since I was just a year old to Civil War Living History scenarios in Gettysburg and elsewhere, I have listened to both sides of the story, from those portraying historical figures, both Union and Confederate. Through listening to these people and also reading many different books, including some of the volumes of The Official Records of the Civil War, Death in September, The Insanity of It All, Every Day Life During the Civil War, and many others, I have come to the conclusion that the Civil War was about much more than abolishing the institution of slavery.
It was more about preserving the United States and protecting the rights of the individual, the very tenets upon which this country was founded. I personally think that the people who profess that the Civil War was only fought about slavery have not read their history books. I really am glad that slavery was abolished, but I don't think it should be glorified as being the sole reason the Civil War was fought. There are so many more issues that people were intensely passionate about at the time. Slavery was one of them, but it was not the primary cause of the war. The primary causes of the war were economics and states' rights.
Slavery was a part of those greater issues, but it was not the reason the Southern States seceded from the Union, nor fought the Civil War. It certainly was a Southern institution that was part of the economic system of the plantations, and because of that, it was part and parcel of the economic reasons that the South formed the Confederacy. The economic issue was one of taxation and being able to sell cotton and other raw materials where the producers wanted to, rather than where they were forced to, and at under inflated prices. Funny, it sounds very much like the reason we broke from Great Britain to begin with. The South was within their rights, but there should have been another way to solve the problem. If they had been willing to listen to Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the war could have been avoided. Lincoln had a plan to gradually free the slaves without it further hurting the plantation owners. He also had a plan to allow them to sell their products anywhere they wanted to and at a fair price. They did not choose to listen to the President, however, so they formed the Confederacy and the Civil War began. "
Over the years the battle flag has been used in racist groups. Keep in mind that the KKK also flies the American flag.
The American flag we support has been flown over slave ships. Not one slave ship ever had a confederate battle flag over it.
The American flag has more blood on it than the rebel flag. Under the American flag, hundreds and thousands of native Americans lost their lives.
Comparing the nazi flag to the confederate flag is illogical. If any flag can be compared to the Nazi flag, it's surly the American flag. Keep in mind that under the American flag, many native Americans were murdered while settling the west. Keep in mind that it was an American flag that flew over those slave ships.
By that logic, lets condemn the Japanese flag, because under the Japanese flag, millions of Chinese died. Does anyone recall the nanking of China? What about Pearl Harbor? How about lets talk about shaming some British heritage! Huh? Does anyone here recall he enslavement of the Irish? Many Irish to be exact? How about Greece, how about them? What about Rome? Now it's Italy obviously, but their history was bloody. Keep in mind that Romans made their slaves fight to the death.
Lincoln was willing to let the union and confederacy keep their slaves if the confederacy rejoined the union. Lincoln used the getting rid of slaves as a punishment to the south later when political tensions got bad, and he ran out of options. It was a desperate move. I personally hate slavery, but Lincoln didn't plan on freeing them in good will at first. He also earlier didn't see blacks as politically equal to white men.
Things you didn't know about Lincoln.
1. Lincoln wasn’t an abolitionist.
Lincoln did believe that slavery was morally wrong, but there was one big problem: It was sanctioned by the highest law in the land, the Constitution. The nation’s founding fathers, who also struggled with how to address slavery, did not explicitly write the word “slavery” in the Constitution, but they did include key clauses protecting the institution, including a fugitive slave clause and the three-fifths clause, which allowed Southern states to count slaves for the purposes of representation in the federal government. In a three-hour speech in Peoria, Illinois, in the fall of 1854, Lincoln presented more clearly than ever his moral, legal and economic opposition to slavery—and then admitted he didn’t know exactly what should be done about it within the current political system.
Abolitionists, by contrast, knew exactly what should be done about it: Slavery should be immediately abolished, and freed slaves should be incorporated as equal members of society. They didn’t care about working within the existing political system, or under the Constitution, which they saw as unjustly protecting slavery and slave owners. Leading abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called the Constitution “a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell,” and went so far as to burn a copy at a Massachusetts rally in 1854. Though Lincoln saw himself as working alongside the abolitionists on behalf of a common anti-slavery cause, he did not count himself among them. Only with emancipation, and with his support of the eventual 13th Amendment, would Lincoln finally win over the most committed abolitionists.
2. Lincoln didn’t believe blacks should have the same rights as whites.
Though Lincoln argued that the founding fathers’ phrase “All men are created equal” applied to blacks and whites alike, this did not mean he thought they should have the same social and political rights. His views became clear during an 1858 series of debates with his opponent in the Illinois race for U.S. Senate, Stephen Douglas, who had accused him of supporting “negro equality.” In their fourth debate, at Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858, Lincoln made his position clear. “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,” he began, going on to say that he opposed blacks having the right to vote, to serve on juries, to hold office and to intermarry with whites. What he did believe was that, like all men, blacks had the right to improve their condition in society and to enjoy the fruits of their labor. In this way they were equal to white men, and for this reason slavery was inherently unjust.
Like his views on emancipation, Lincoln’s position on social and political equality for African-Americans would evolve over the course of his presidency. In the last speech of his life, delivered on April 11, 1865, he argued for limited black suffrage, saying that any black man who had served the Union during the Civil War should have the right to vote.
3. Lincoln thought colonization could resolve the issue of slavery.
For much of his career, Lincoln believed that colonization—or the idea that a majority of the African-American population should leave the United States and settle in Africa or Central America—was the best way to confront the problem of slavery. His two great political heroes, Henry Clay and Thomas Jefferson, had both favored colonization; both were slave owners who took issue with aspects of slavery but saw no way that blacks and whites could live together peaceably. Lincoln first publicly advocated for colonization in 1852, and in 1854 said that his first instinct would be “to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia” (the African state founded by the American Colonization Society in 1821).
Nearly a decade later, even as he edited the draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in August of 1862, Lincoln hosted a delegation of freed slaves at the White House in the hopes of getting their support on a plan for colonization in Central America. Given the “differences” between the two races and the hostile attitudes of whites towards blacks, Lincoln argued, it would be “better for us both, therefore, to be separated.” Lincoln’s support of colonization provoked great anger among black leaders and abolitionists, who argued that African-Americans were as much natives of the country as whites, and thus deserved the same rights. After he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln never again publicly mentioned colonization, and a mention of it in an earlier draft was deleted by the time the final proclamation was issued in January 1863.
4. Emancipation was a military policy.
As much as he hated the institution of slavery, Lincoln didn’t see the Civil War as a struggle to free the nation’s 4 million slaves from bondage. Emancipation, when it came, would have to be gradual, and the important thing to do was to prevent the Southern rebellion from severing the Union permanently in two. But as the Civil War entered its second summer in 1862, thousands of slaves had fled Southern plantations to Union lines, and the federal government didn’t have a clear policy on how to deal with them. Emancipation, Lincoln saw, would further undermine the Confederacy while providing the Union with a new source of manpower to crush the rebellion.
In July 1862 the president presented his draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. Secretary of State William Seward urged him to wait until things were going better for the Union on the field of battle, or emancipation might look like the last gasp of a nation on the brink of defeat. Lincoln agreed and returned to edit the draft over the summer. On September 17 the bloody Battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the opportunity he needed. He issued the preliminary proclamation to his cabinet on September 22, and it was published the following day. As a cheering crowd gathered at the White House, Lincoln addressed them from a balcony: “I can only trust in God I have made no mistake … It is now for the country and the world to pass judgment on it.”
5. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t actually free all of the slaves.
Since Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a military measure, it didn’t apply to border slave states like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, all of which had remained loyal to the Union. Lincoln also exempted selected areas of the Confederacy that had already come under Union control in hopes of gaining the loyalty of whites in those states. In practice, then, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t immediately free a single slave, as the only places it applied were places where the federal government had no control—the Southern states currently fighting against the Union.
Despite its limitations, Lincoln’s proclamation marked a crucial turning point in the evolution of Lincoln’s views of slavery, as well as a turning point in the Civil War itself. By war’s end, some 200,000 black men would serve in the Union Army and Navy, striking a mortal blow against the institution of slavery and paving the way for its eventual abolition by the 13th Amendment.
Some comments about modern s**t.
Wanna play a race card? STFU.
"Democrats are still pro-slavery, in the form of keeping blacks on the welfare plantation. Welfare is the New Slavery and the Democrats have figured out that they can buy black votes as long as they continuoe to be race arsonists and as long as black "leaders" like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton continue to pimp black votes out to the highest bidder. Pimps and race arsonists do not help the black community, they exploit it perpetuate the racism and poverty and divisiveness for their own political and financial gain. Shame on them. These three guys weren't "liberals' in the modern sense of the word, they were Liberals in the European sense of the word, like Adam Smith and John Locke were Liberals...they were what are now called Libertarians, since Leftists have taken over the "liberal" moniker."
"Learn your history, Lincoln was a republican when republicans were liberal. He was a racist who wanted to send Blacks back to Africa because he didn't like them. The war was not over slavery. The CSA( Confederate States of America) was todays Tea Party, and Lincoln was Obama. The civil war was over states rights and Nothern greed. The first State to legalize slavery was Massachusetts. It pisses me off when people only listen to the Norths " version" of the war. Lincoln does NOT belong on that list."
"People are ignorant about history. The Democrats use welfare as their current form of oppressing people and keeping them down."
Another good point:
Anyone who seeks an offensive flag needs to look no farther than the thirteen-stripe United States flag.
Under that flag, many thousands of Africans were transported to slavery in the New World.
No Confederate-flagged ship ever made a slaving-run.
Under that flag, atrocities were committed against noncombatant civilians during the 1860s -- atrocities to rank with those committed by the Germans and Japanese during World War II.
No Confederate unit ever committed atrocities against noncombatants.
Under that flag, Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11, expelling all Jews from parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
The Confederate States of America never practiced anti-Semitism. To the contrary -- the Confederate forces included Jewish officers and enlisted men, and from the beginning, the Confederate cabinet included Judah Philip Benjamin, a Jew. (The first Jewish US cabinet member, Oscar Straus, served under Theodore Roosevelt.)
Under that flag, the military services were segregated until after World War II.
Confederate military units saw many different ethnicities – including thousands of blacks – serving cheek-by-jowl and receiving the same pay and allowances.
Under that flag, Native Americans/Indians were cheated, forcibly removed from their ancestral lands, and massacred wholesale.
Native Americans/Indians received no such treatment at Confederate hands. To the contrary -- Native Americans/Indians played a vital role in the Confederate Army. General Stand Watie, a Cherokee, was the last Confederate general to sign a cease-fire with the US Army.
Under that flag, American citizens in the 1940s were forcibly removed from their homes and herded into concentration camps solely because their ancestors had been born in Japan.
The Confederate States of America never put anyone into a concentration camp based on his parents' ethnicity.
>implying that the confederate battle flag is offensive
>forgetting that under the American flag, native Americans were murdered, land stollen, Japanese American citizens were put into camps and taken from their homes, segregation was allowed and the politicians didn't do s**t till people protested, trades with terrorists, gave hitler weapons, isn't for the people or by the people.
I have over 60 confederate vetarens in my family alone. On all of the maiden sides and male sides. (My family is ******** big, and we have a big a** book that links us to s**t and we have confederate and revolutionary war letters to home) Of course they're long dead, but it was hella close in time. 150 years isn't long. When my dad was 6, his great great grandpa, a civil war vet, was still alive. He was as old as dirt, but he was still alive. He died when my dad was about 7. My family goes back till the colonization days, pretty much. Anyways, these men who fought under the confederate flag (the common seen flag is actually the battle flag though). You ******** who try to spew your uneducated bullshit are actually shitting on my family. Feel free to talk s**t about your own shitty lives, but s**t talking the confederacy, when you know nothing about the war, makes you look like a bimbo. emotion_awesome
Haha, I'm related to Jefferson Davis too. I ******** flipped when I found that out.
Community Member
Many fail to realize the full picture, or even bother to educate themselves on it before assuming, whether by apathy or ignorance. The truth was, while the South did advocate slavery, it was not because they were all racist douchebags. Even if a couple were, it was due to the fact that slavery was part of their culture, it was so ingrained into their subconscious that they were not equal that no logic could penetrate the conditioning. It wasn't or isn't an excuse, but that's beside the point. The truth is that abolishing slavery completely would have single-handedly collapsed the economy, depriving them of a work force. For almost all slaves, farm life and dependency was all they had ever known, which is why they became share-croppers even after the war. There were little to no other options.
Not that you didn't probably already know that, but that's just something that gets to me. smile