gary86 wrote on Dec 9
th, 2010 at 8:59am:
Look I do not refuse to see that the South was arrogant or that they screwed up in any number of way. I do not refuse to admit that slavery was and is evil. Not at all. I do not refuse to admit that the North had a valid point.
What I refuse to embrace, even though it has been the policy of Damned Yankees for over 100 years, the idea that the South was evil and that all sourtherners are evil racits that started the War with no responsibility placed on the other side. This is where you stand from your posts.
First of all Gary until the 1960's the entire US was a racist country. The idea that before and after the War Between the States the Southern states were more racist than the Northern states is as much a fact as the racism that has been stain on our entire country. Most of the Northern states did not believe in slavery. Some of them had even outlawed the "peculiar institution" of slavery. The Southern states did not. The built their economy and way of life on that "peculiar institution". The elected officials of the Southern states had rejected the Jeffersonian ideal enshrined in our Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those elected officials and the people of the Southern states held the extremely racist view that blacks were created to be slaves. As proof of this fact here is a quote from the
Cornerstone Speech of Alexander H. Stephens, the first VP of the Confederate States of America.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=76 Quote:May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.
Then there is this from the
Texas declaration of secession.
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html#Texas Quote:That in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.
Abraham Lincoln on blacks.
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/2/berry.html Quote:Furthermore, he said, as he understood the intention of the authors of the Declaration of Independence:
They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying ... equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them.... They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all: constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.
Which is the more racist belief, that blacks had the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as Abraham Lincoln believed, or the belief that blacks were born to be slaves, as Alexander H. Stephens and the state of Texas believed?
Quote:You assertions reek of a claim of pure as the driven snow Lincoln and dirty as the some vile scum South. This is what I reject.
It has never been my contention that Abraham Lincoln was as pure as the driven snow. He was a lawyer after all.
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