makingmusic476 said:
Kasz216 said:
Samus Aran said:
Having slaves wasn't(or isn't) about racism. Racism justified slavery.
The reason why Lincoln wanted to abolish slavery wasn't because he cared about the black people. A lot of black people ran from the south to the north and causing problems there(stealing, etc), so that's why most of the Northern states were against slavery(they didn't need slaves for their economy)
Saying the South is racist and the North isn't, is the biggest bullshit I've heard in this thread. It's not like the Afro-Americans had a good and happy life after the civil war... USA was a racist country until the 1960s.
And just to throw something random in here, Lincoln was a horrible president. |
This is mostly true I think... the war wasn't about morality... it was about power. Back then the US was much more decentralized... and the North and South were two oposing factions. One ran on industrial power due to the industrial revolution, the other on slave power. The north limited slave states being brought in to the future because they knew it'd give them the advantage since all new states would be industry powered and they could maintain trade advantages with the south... who otherwise could defeat tariffs and such.
Not that the South was completly states rights, had the situation been swtiched and the south could of outlawed factories or something, they would have.
Slavery has never been abolished because of morality, it's all been economics. Slavery just outlived it's usefulness. Heck Lincoln's big hope was that he could put all the slaves on a ship and send them back to Africa.
As for the random comment. I wouldn't say Lincoln was a BAD president. I would say he was an average president who replaced some REALLY bad presidents.
Of course being president is almost completly based on when you were elected. George W Bush sucked because he started pointless wars at a time of peace. Switch him and FDR around and he probably would of gotten us in WW2 even faster, by using the same dirty tricks FDR used.
FDR, based on his actions on paper is by far our most despicable, abusive and power hungry president... yet because he got us in world war 2... everyone forgives him.
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Bolded: Yeah, his thoughts on colonization show that the North was really no different from the South in its view of the black race.
Underlined: I would. His unwillingness to simply let the South go began the costliest war in US history, and his prolonging of the war despite its unpopularity in the North (let alone in the South) only made things exponentially worse. The South was absolutely ruined through the war. Entire cities were burned to the ground by Northern troops, from Atlanta* to Columbia. In the case of Columbia, townsfolk weren't given so much as a warning before the fires were set. Grevious war crimes were commited under his watch on top of a totally unnecesary war, resulting in the ruin of an entire nation.
*Granted, Sherman's victory at Atlanta helped Lincoln narrowly win re-election in 1864 over the Democratics, who favored ending the war and acknowledging the Confederacy's independence. And that was with only Northern sates voting!
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Even so, I feel like the US is stronger now then it would of been had the south left... even though the south in some ways has yet to even come all the way back from the Civil War.
A rival nation to the south greatly would of changed world events i would think as we would of been even more isolationist. Who knows how WW2 plays out... or even WW1. If one side supported the Allies, you'd think the other would the Axis.
Or maybe the South and North eventually would of recombined who knows.
I think the chances for negatives are more likely then positives though.