The Terrible History Thread

Terrible History anecdote: the Confederates fought the Union for reasons that had nothing to do with slavery.
 
The American Civil War was all about the eternal struggle of capitalism vs. socialism.

Bah! Everyone know that Alleksandeuroseu Taewang was a Korean! :p

Actually, Alezeng-He was Chinese. It was his intervention which turned the backwards Dark Age Greeks into the Hellenistic Superpowers they eventually became.
 
The number of people who think the Union went to war to end slavery is MUCH smaller than the number who don't think the Confederacy went to war to preserve it.

Protip: the war aims/goals of two warring nations don't need to be diametrically opposed.
 
Terrible History anecdote: The United States fought the Confederate states for the purpose of banning slavery.

However, "Southern states seceded in order to preserve slavery" is an accurate statement (assuming you take them at their word for the reasons they said they seceded).
 
The number of people who think the Union went to war to end slavery is MUCH smaller than the number who don't think the Confederacy went to war to preserve it.
Well, the way Dom worded it implied that the North was the aggressor, something only Confederate apologists take seriously.
Protip: the war aims/goals of two warring nations don't need to be diametrically opposed.
The CSA was never really a nation per se.
 
Terrible History anecdote: The United States fought the Confederate states for the purpose of banning slavery.

I always found this one an odd modern concept. I never thought either side cared much about slavery, not enough to actually fight a war over.
 
The union wasn't fighting for ending slavery, there were plenty of reasons to not let teh South secede, both economic and political.

All of the issues for the South were centred on slavery (for example the States' Rights issues only existed because they wanted to use States' Rights to defend slavery). It was a cornerstone of their economy. Many wealth Southerners would have been crippled by abolition and the economy would suffer. Not to mention the people didn't like the idea of having a huge population (IIRC slaves represented about a quarter to a third of the population of the CSA) of free black people running around with rights and all (and they spent the next century trying to avoid this).
 
I always found this one an odd modern concept. I never thought either side cared much about slavery, not enough to actually fight a war over.
Why do you think that they fought a civil war, the end result of which was the abolition of slavery in the United States, then? :huh:
 
It's certainly true that the South seceded and fought to defend slavery. Saying otherwise is the bad sort of revisionism.

It's also a fairly dishonest statement, because it carries the implication that the war was all about the slaves; about anti-black racism. Which I just don't see from any of my readings, or from any sort of logical examination of the situation. People rarely if ever fight wars just because they want to oppress someone else. The war was about the institution of slavery, yes, but not about the slaves themselves - it was about the masters, and their desire to maintain their pre-existing social and economic privileges (which, of course, rested on slavery).

It's a nuance, true. But it's the nuance between the Confederacy being essentially a bunch of Aristocrats trying to preserve the social order that gave them their economic and social position (ie, what happened nearly everywhere that there was an aristocracy. And really anywhere that an existing privileged class has felt that it was threatened, which is everywhere), and the confederacy being essentially a good approximation of an American Third Reich, which is what people commonly get out of "The war was about slavery".
 
Isn't the entire basis for Wicca founded on the Witch Cult Hypothesis?

Not at all. You don't have to believe that a religion is genuinely ancient to practise it. I know academics who are very knowledgeable about the origins of Wicca and its probable non-antiquity, who are nevertheless themselves practising Wiccans. Just as, I suppose, there are practising Christians who reject many traditional claims of Christianity.
 
If we had talked about 'black slaves' rather than 'slavery' that counter-stoke might have some merit. Since we didn't, it doesn't.

The other point that needs to be stressed is the whole institution was predicated on the idea that it was fine to own slaves, so long as those slaves were black. Consider what Chief Justice Taney said in Dred Scott: [blacks were] beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. The racism literally drips out of that statement and the system continued to survive because most Southerners, and some Northerners, believed that was indeed the case.
 
I don't think you need to say it. The word "slavery" already carry the implication that it was about the slaves, the blacks. When non-historian (and even some historians) people talk about slavery in the American context (and it's often misunderstood as such in other contexts), they think about the horrible treatment of black people; they don't think about the institution as a whole and why it existed. (This is probably a good thing, but it calls for careful wording when dealing with issues like the civil war).

Admitedly dishonesty was a harsh term. I'm sure most people are just stating a honest opinion; the problem is accidental, not deliberate.

As for racism being a basis of the institution of slavery, that's certainly true. But, while slavery was a racist institution, that's not all it was (that is, all slavery in the US *was* racist, but it was other things at the same time too), and as it happens, the south seceded and fought because of other aspects of slavery (the "support our own place in society" aspect, largely), not the racist aspect.
 
'The institution as a whole' could not have existed without black slaves. That doesn't mean one can't look at different issues e.g. Southron aristocrats. On the other hand that doesn't mean one can ignore, minimize or downplay the experiences of the slaves upon whom those gentleman relied. To do that would be distasteful - and possibly racist - and make for awful history because it wouldn't reflect What Actually Happened1 or How Stuff Actually Worked2.

1. The deliberate enslavement of people on account of their race and purported racial characteristics.
2. Plantation economy: a cynical economic regime designed for the sole purpose of exploiting black chattel slaves to their fullest economic potential in order to maintain the morally and intellectually bankrupt rule of a bunch of white aristocrats.
 
can't bring much to a discussion like this , but ı understand some people in Pentagon in 1942 or so opposed Black combat troops on the basis that they had smaller skull volume and all . One would have presumed they would have read the history of the largest war they had fought on home soil . Though don't take my word on it , my info about black troops amount to a single movie ...
 
Why do you think that they fought a civil war, the end result of which was the abolition of slavery in the United States, then? :huh:

Actually, slavery was only reluctantly abolished by Lincoln during the war; the issue was the right of states to secede from the union - which was de facto denied by the Union´s victory. (That obviously does not deny the fact that the South seceded to prevent the abolishment of slavery.)
 
The South seceded to prevent the abolition of slavery... so the war wasn't about slavery? :confused:
 
The CSA was never really a nation per se.

Well, sides, at any rate.

And "freeing the slaves" eventually became a secondary, implicit Northern war goal, although for many it was a means to an end (the end being crippling the Southern economy and denying them foreign recognition).
 
The South seceded to prevent the abolition of slavery... so the war wasn't about slavery? :confused:

For the South it definitely was. The North, however did not go to war to end slavery but simply to prevent secession.
 
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