For My Readers' Enjoyment

The following is edited from a p---ing contest between myself and a Virginia South-basher in a comment thread following an online letter to the editor or something....

ME: Actually, it's the winners, the north, the union, who've been taking liberties with the truth since Appomattox Courthouse, santizing their complicity in slavery, sprinkling the perfume of phony righteousness on their "cause" (money). Why do you think Lincoln had to sell the war as "preserving the union" instead of freeing slaves? Because (1) the north generally didn't care about slaves and (2) it did care about keeping that slave-grown cotton flowing northward to enrich maritime interests who shipped it to Europe, and textile interest who worked it in their mills....

My Opponent (hereinafter referred to as MO): ... stop being dishonest. we did not "sell" the war as anything but the fight to preserve the union. Slavery was the cause of the Confederacy and the Confederacy alone. Sure our history, from 1619 on included Slavery. However, slavery was on the way out in the North and in in future territories it was not going to be established. However, the Founders of this nation did not fight to preserve slavery. The Union Army did not fight to preserve slavery. Again, that was the Confederacy alone. You cannot revise the words of Davis or Stephens or any of the other 'slavery forever' leaders of the Confederacy. Slavery was the "state's right" they demanded.

ME:  I'm not being dishonest. You would have to be omniscient to know that, and I don't believe you are. The north's complicity in slavery has indeed been sanitized and is still being sanitized. You're helping to do it. Certainly the founders fought to preserve slavery, because slavery existed in what they fought for. Do you mean they didn't SAY they were fighting to preserve slavery? That just means they were the ones being dishonest.

Slavery was "on the way out" in the north because abolishing it -- and selling off their slaves -- was necessary to rid those states of their black populations. Keeping slavery out of the territories was necessary to keep blacks out of the territories. It is an unpleasant truth for some to acknowledge today, but it is still truth. What underlay the "slavery" issue was race.

Everyone north and south knew slavery would end eventually. Southerners wanted to "expand" slavery into the territories to more evenly distribute the black population before the end of slavery. The north did not want blacks in the north or in the territories. A war was fought to keep blacks bottled up in the South. It was successful. That is why this map looks like it does to this day:


http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/maps/img/black.jpg
MO: wow, you have the revisionist history down. The truth, not so much.
MO:  However, slavery was on the way out in the North and in in future territories it was not going to be established.
 
ME:  Slavery was "on the way out" in the north because abolishing it -- and selling off their slaves -- was necessary to rid those states of their black populations. Keeping slavery out of the territories was necessary to keep blacks out of the territories. It is an unpleasant truth for some to acknowledge today, but it is still truth. What underlay the "slavery" issue was race.

MO:  The nation was evolving as the South chose not to. The South was losing their economic supremacy, their free labor supremacy and their white supremacy as well as their power in the Congress and they came undone and blamed others for their problems, much like the revisionist Confederates do today.
 
ME:  The nation was evolving? LOL! The northeast has never evolved out of its love of money. Fighting a war to keep the north's cash cow (the South) in its possession during which slaves were incidentally freed doesn't absolve the north (and the US government) of its sins -- the Gilded Age, the Robber Barons, the official US government policy of genocide of the Plains Indians by starvation (by killing off their food supply, the buffalo), the imprisoning native Americans in concentration camps artfully called reservations in conditions worse than plantation slavery, the coal mine owners who lived like kings while miners and their families lived in conditions worse than plantation slavery; the northeast factory owners who lived like kings while CHILDREN worked in slave-like conditions in their factories...

Not to mention deliberately keeping the South in poverty for generations after the war by preventing economic growth (read this to see how it was done http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cescott/freight.html) Yes, it was policy of private industry, the railroads, but it was permitted by the feds, and realize this did not end until 1952, when I was three years old. And for those generations of grinding poverty after the war, poor Southerners, black and white (and most Southerners were poor) were plagued with nutritional deficiency diseases, pellagra, hookworm, that took a horrible, horrible toll... But I guess it served them right because their daddies and grandaddies fought to keep an ENTIRE RACE (spoken in high-pitched hysteria) in BONDAGE.

See, what you slave-o-centric folks don't realize, what you folks who wear slave-colored glasses either can't see, or refuse to see, is that whatever was happening with the political classes, north and South, whatever arguments they may have had about slavery, secession or the price of rice in China, what the average Joe in the South saw was a huge, brutal army armed to the teeth marching toward his town, his home, his family. And he fought to protect them. And THOSE are the Confederate I honor. You don't like it? Tough.

MO: ... rehashing the sins of others will not absolve the Confederacy of theirs. No sale.

ME:  Why, yes, it does. When the ones trashing the Confederacy are the ones with the sins I mentioned, it certainly does.

MO:   you do not "honor" anyone, you hide your anger, secesh and anti-government, anti-north, anti-Lincoln sentiments behind them. Well, I should say that you attempt to. I see right through you and your insults. Honoring the soldiers has never required your bile, revisionist history and dishonesty. Never.

ME: Oh, I have never denied there was more to it than honoring soldiers. You say "secesh" like it's a bad thing. LOL. I believe in the right of secession. You don't. I don't care.

Not anti-government, just anti-bad government.

Anti-north? Nope. Lots of good northerners. Anti northeast, money-grubbing, totalitarian yankees.

Anti-Lincoln? You bet.

MO:  according to the people leading the secession, yes slavery was the main driver. The "cornerstone". The north and south fought again together as the United States in almost no time. You just keep being dishonest and revising the history you do not want to admit. Slaves running from slavery went north. Black men fought for the Union. Former slaves helped bring the end of slavery. Of course racism remained but there was no actual "Jim Crow North", either. You believe your own hype clearly.

ME: It wasn't called "Jim Crow" in the north. It was called "black codes." Ever heard of sundown towns?

It's quite easy to for the north to tolerate its black populations when they are so tiny. Even so, most of the major urban race riots in modern times occurred outside the South.

You tell me why that census map looks like it does. Did you know the counties with the greatest black population in the Southern states today are exactly the same ones with the greatest slave populations before the war? If the north was so wonderful to the former slaves, why wasn't there a black stampede out of Dixie to the welcoming arms of the north?

Sprinkle that perfume, keep sanitizing the north. Keep trashing the South, which you claim to love. Ha.

MO:  you just keep on being dishonest. Clearly you cannot do otherwise. I have not "sanitized" anything or anyone. Claiming that the South could not "tolerate" so many free black people is not helping your case. The war was not over racism.

ME:  LOL!!! If you're not talking slavery, you're talking racism; and suddenly it's not about racism?

MO:  again for the slow, racism and bigotry is what allowed slavery to happen and flourish to the point that the Confederacy was willing to fight a war to keep it. They lost on both scores. The soldiers were honorable in their fight, as all soldiers are. You and your ilk, are not.

The Civil War was over slavery and the South's demand to keep it and their demand that the North accept that and continue to enable it. Their secession was not about the government being wrong, theirs was aligned much like the US already was. Their secession was not about them not having representation or a voice, they already had both, it was about them not being able to control the nation's choices anymore and refusing to accept the changes the evolution of humanity demanded. They wanted to keep their slaves, their caste system and their white supremacy domination of an entire race. There is no other story to it and the "state's right" they demanded was to keep slavery and have that respected.

Secession was rebellion. It was put down and it was adjudicated as unconstitutional. You people cannot let that go but it remains the truth.

ME:  The fact remains, regardless of the "sins" of the South, the north/union had NO moral authority for militarily invading the Southern states, and our Confederate ancestors were absolutely right to defend homes, families and communities and from a barbarous army.

The Southern states had the right to secede (http://youtu.be/7qfX0uXDktY); the self-righteous north, aside from not wanting to lose its cash cow, was simply enraged that anyone would wish to disassociate with them.

Secession is not rebellion. Secession was about slavery, among other things. The fighting, however, was because the north couldn't stand the idea of the South leaving. I guess they figured the northern states couldn't make it as a nation on their own... So, they fought a brutal war to bully the Southern states into the union.

The deliberate and punishing economic oppression and grinding poverty of the Southern states for FIVE GENERATIONS after the war illustrates the north's avaricious, venal, mercenary motives and proves they were not the righteous city on a hill you wish to believe in. You may want to believe slavery and secession are America's only sins. They are not. Not by a long shot.

A cold, hard look at the reality of northern sins makes slave holding look rather innocuous by comparison.

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And as a bonus, I include this marvelous observation by another commenter, with which I enthusiastically agree::

... my view of the South, along with the vast majority of its people, traces to the hard bitten, strong willed pioneers and small hold farmers - some of whom held slaves, but most did not - who carved a Christian civilization out of the wilderness and thicket from the Potomac to the Rio Grande in about 4 generations. They were heroes and they were better men than any today. They also had the backbone and fortitude to take on the might of the federal govt in defense of their liberty and right to self-rule.

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My Opponent, btw, posts comments occasionally at Crossroads where, between self-righteous put-downs of the Virginia Flaggers and the SCV, she drones on and on about race, race, race, race, race....