• irkli@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There is a WONDERFUL book, BATTLECRY OF FREEDOM, (McPherson) covers civil war era in detail, using contemporary accounts. One of a dozen world-changing books in my life.

        It’s also like scifi: the 1840s etc was the start of particular world changing science and tech: telegraph (instant electric communication), railroads, and germ theory. There was an angle where this was a technological war…

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I want to start by saying you’re about 90% correct, and I’m glad that people have found your post to be very educational (bad experiences in the past with being misunderstood).

      In both pre-civil war era and the civil rights era, the south wanted to have their cake and fuck it too. They were crying ‘states rights’ when we established the Missouri Compromise, but whined about the weak federal government with regards to the fugitive slave act. One of the primary drivers for the Emancipation Proclamation was actually escaped slaves after the outbreak of the civil war. The North didn’t know what to do with slaves that escaped, were liberated, or surrendered (slaves were sometimes conscripted instead of the slaveholder fighting). It was a situation that was starting to get unmanageable because of political pressure and the number of slaves, so essentially the Emancipation Proclamation was a last ditch effort to divert Southern forces into defending their slaves while solving a real problem in the North (it actually was fairly successful in this sense).

      In the civil rights era, it was states rights when it came to integration, but a failure of federal to allow MLK’s nonviolent direct action to occur (yea, I know about COINTELPRO; perception vs reality etc etc).

      The connection between the 2 and the modern day? They were all conservatives. The “Democrats” during the civil war were the same as the Republican party from the 1920s to now. The hypocritical rhetorical methods being used by conservatives to argue against the right to abortion has existed since Locke published Two Treatises of Government.

    • Brocken40@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      My mother, who was educated in the 90s in the south, was taught the “war of northern aggression” was fought because the north was paying less for cotton than Europe and tarriffing exports to Europe.

      Not that I believe or ever googled any of this.

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Don’t forget that Confederate states could not make laws against slavery via their constitution.

      • EhList@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Nor could they leave the CSA. The CSA constitution should be taught in American schools because it becomes very clear the Confederates were very specifically focused on keeping slaves “in their place”