Is the Myth of the Lost Cause a myth in of itself?
- Thread starter Jack Douglass
- Start date
Dan Reilly The Great
Banned
A gilded cage is still a cage.
Being really nice to someone even as you treat them like a possession might make you better than someone who rapes/beats someone while treating them like an object, but does not make you a good person, or even an okay person.
It's like that "nice" slaveowner from 12 Years a Slave. One of his white employees goes to murder his property for fighting back and is only stopped because he would in effect be depriving that fine gentleman of property he has paid for. However, the murderous employee still wants to murder him, and so the "nice" slaveowner sells the guy to save his own hide from vengeful whites.
He even discovers that the man in question was actually born free, but what good does that do him as he still gets sold to a sadistic monster.
How "nice" are you when you still own people and are willing to sell them to save yourself?
Dan Reilly The Great
Banned
Slavery was widely considered a bad thing in 1861. The United States was one of the last Western nations to abolish slavery.
I didn't think it was, but that's not actually flattering to your argument, however although there was a smiley in my post the point was also sincere. The 3/5ths point benefited the southern states more the more slaves there were. I understand though, some of this thread is coming off as almost oinion-esque
Some do, especially the openly white supremacist ones. Many don't, and instead pine for a idealized Christian, rural country where everyone likes mud, NASCAR, Jesus, college football, beer, the Flag, Skynyrd, Jesus, BBQ, guns, and no one questions their ancestors or, very importantly, their accent. It's an attempt to create a Southern nationalism using the iconography of the past while white-washed the worst parts. At least, that's what I was looking for when I was deep in it growing up.
I'm so glad to not be a part of that anymore. I'm not sure how to get others out, though.
Dan Reilly The Great
Banned
Let's sum things up with regard to the Confederacy:
-It seceded because of slavery and said as much via various state constitutions and proclamations of a number of its political leaders
-slavery is bad, mkay?
-it cared nothing for "States Rights" when sending slave retrieval squads into free states to kidnap black people and take them south to be enslaved
-it did not even wait for Abraham Lincoln to even be inaugurated before doing so, much less for him to actually infringe upon their ability to own slaves
-slavery is bad
-it did not make any other non-violent attempts to secede via the courts or Congress. It did not attempt to pay for federally owned assets it seized by force after seceding
-Confederate military forces had a habit of kidnapping black people in the north while conducting offensive operations in Union territory
-the idea of slavery being bad was neither novel nor uncommon in 1861
-slavery is bad, full-stop
-It seceded because of slavery and said as much via various state constitutions and proclamations of a number of its political leaders
-slavery is bad, mkay?
-it cared nothing for "States Rights" when sending slave retrieval squads into free states to kidnap black people and take them south to be enslaved
-it did not even wait for Abraham Lincoln to even be inaugurated before doing so, much less for him to actually infringe upon their ability to own slaves
-slavery is bad
-it did not make any other non-violent attempts to secede via the courts or Congress. It did not attempt to pay for federally owned assets it seized by force after seceding
-Confederate military forces had a habit of kidnapping black people in the north while conducting offensive operations in Union territory
-the idea of slavery being bad was neither novel nor uncommon in 1861
-slavery is bad, full-stop
If Nat Turner or John Brown were successful we’d be living in a better world right now
John Farson
Banned
Sadly neither of them had any chance. The South was too militarized for any slave revolt to be successful, and that was very much because of the fear induced by the successful revolt in Saint-Domingue (i.e., Haiti).
It's actually kind of funny in a sad, ironic way.
If the slaves actually had the view regarding slavery that the Lost Cause ascribes to them, then why was the South so scared of a slave revolt?
John Farson
Banned
DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of DOUBLETHINK he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.
Here's a question: which people should have been hanged as traitors following the civil war? Jefferson Davis is a given, but should it have been all their national elected officials? All generals?
Generals, sure. Elected officials is a pretty broad category, I'm sure you can find folks in there deserving of hanging, or of lesser punishments. Anyone with an active role in slave trading, enforcement, or ownership can get strung up with their assets seized for all I care(not that this would be likely to happen in reality).
As you noted though, that's an import tax, not the sort of thing he was talking about. I only even went back to 1800 originally to note just how wrong the idea the the federal government was levying property taxes on slaves was in response to the claim that slaveowners were paying "extra" tax.
RamscoopRaider
Donor
No, it could not have been an import tax for the 1813-1817 period as importing slaves was illegal from 1807 on thus useless as a revenue measure, and given that 1798-1803 was mentioned at the same point I would assume it was the same sort of tax then. o those were the sorts of tax he was talking about. My second line was sort of an aside