|
![]() |
#10 | |
VIP Member
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Newport News, VA
Posts: 1,435
Likes: 371
Liked 129 Times in 59 Posts
|
![]() Quote:
Slavery not "THE" cause of the war? Not if you believe most contemporaneous writers of the period, including Alexander Stephens, when he authored the "Cornerstone Speech", which most certainly stated that slavery, and it's spreading west, was a very "BIG" part of the call for secession. Chattel slavery was a very large part of the economy down south, after all. And I suppose that President Lincoln's rational to pursue hostilities with the states who seceded after they attacked Fort Sumter was more of an effort to keep the Union in one piece, then to end slavery, at least initially. The "Emancipation Proclamation" came later, and only affected those chattel slaves in the areas not under Union control. But if, as you say, the statuary and other monuments were erected to help southerners regain some pride after a devastating defeat, why did it take, in some cases, 40 years to emplace them? And why the somewhat coincidental passage of the "Jim Crow" laws to subjugate the part of the southern population that earned the rights of citizenship at the conclusion of that conflict. "Separate", but hardly "equal", and it took 58 years for the SCOTUS to finally get it right. I suppose it would be an interesting research project to find out what was said, back then, about that period right after the war. Had President Lincoln not been assassinated and had he been able to bring about the ideals he so eloquently stated in his 2nd Inaugural Address - "With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds." Maybe we wouldn't be fixated on statues right now.
__________________
Lew Silverman #2070 "The Wagon Master" N/SA |
|
![]() |
![]() |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|