Re:For Decades, Southern States Saw Thanksgiving as an Act o...
by chrisco255 on Sunday November 25, 2018 @12:43AM
(#18525620)
A lot of people in this thread are trying to flatten a complex situation. This comment is thoughtful: many poor southerners went to war and risked life and limb and stood to gain almost nothing from slavery.
We take for granted our 20/20 view of 1861 and we are biased in our present knowledge of how things turn out. Descendants of slaves, poor white southerners, and northerners all turned out better off, and the U.S. would grow stronger as a whole.
But to look at world and U.S. history from the lens of 1861, that's what the participants of the civil war had to do. Some of it was identity politics. Some of it was loyalty to home turf. Some men DID fight for states rights as much as that is derided as an empty excuse. There has always been concern of the Federal government gaining "too much power" since the Constitutional Convention and Anti-federalism is a well-documented movement of early American politics. For many, the Civil War was viewed as an extension of that cause. (If you want an excellent view on the war by a relatively impartial contemporary, view Lord Acton's account from 1866: https://mises.org/library/american-federalism-and-civil-war)
And sure, rich slave owners had their own motives. And they certainly would leverage the motives driving poor southerners to garner support for the war. That story is as old as time.
We take for granted our 20/20 view of 1861 and we are biased in our present knowledge of how things turn out. Descendants of slaves, poor white southerners, and northerners all turned out better off, and the U.S. would grow stronger as a whole.
But to look at world and U.S. history from the lens of 1861, that's what the participants of the civil war had to do. Some of it was identity politics. Some of it was loyalty to home turf. Some men DID fight for states rights as much as that is derided as an empty excuse. There has always been concern of the Federal government gaining "too much power" since the Constitutional Convention and Anti-federalism is a well-documented movement of early American politics. For many, the Civil War was viewed as an extension of that cause. (If you want an excellent view on the war by a relatively impartial contemporary, view Lord Acton's account from 1866: https://mises.org/library/american-federalism-and-civil-war)
And sure, rich slave owners had their own motives. And they certainly would leverage the motives driving poor southerners to garner support for the war. That story is as old as time.