The South must be defended in historical terms as it was entitled to be defended. Some true and commanding image of its past must be restored. But that alone would not be enough. The issues that still divided North and South must be examined and faced...Behind the sensationalism (of the Northern Press) was a deeper hostility, a more thoroughgoing animus. What lay back of it was something broader than sectional disagreement or political or economic rivalry.
It was the total design of the attack that we had to discover, and above all the premises on which that design was based, and the end that it had in view.
Evidently, the thinking of Calhoun and his contemporaries had not gone deep enough into the premises of the Great Debate. The quarrel over slavery and the western lands had somehow obscured more vital issues. The South had fought in a good cause, but the world could always be made to think it fought for the wrong reasons. We did not want to make that same mistake again.
What was the South's cause in the 1920's? It was still a good cause, we thought, but how could it be stated? It was something more than the cause of the South against the North.
It was Agrarianism vs. Industrialism
It was Civilized society versus the new barbarism of science and technology controlled and directed by the modern power state.
In this sense, the cause of the South was and is the CAUSE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION itself.
-Donald Davidson
You cannot believe slavery was trivial, that it represented a civilized society. There is no thing more serious than God created all men equal!
ReplyDeletePart 1-
ReplyDeleteOh Lawdy, here we go again...
Yes, God created all men equal in one sense - that all of creation is
generated from the same primal matrix. However, there has perhaps
never been a single proposition more used and abused than the one
aforementioned. Oh, let me count the ways...
It is also just as true that God created all men unequal. Everybody has distinctive differences that require a wide variety of approaches.This is the essence of diversity. And, in order to respect diversity,we should not try to fit 'all people' into any one category. And,ironically, it was Lincoln who gave the recipe for monolithic uniformity - 'the nation had to be all ONE way or all the other.'(forgive me, I paraphrase)
Now, before you fly off the handle and say "But wait, slavery did
exactly that to 'all' Africans' so nanny-nanny booboo, hear me out:
European man came from a very different background than the African man. Our political forms took centuries to gestate and mature. The
African could not be expected to adapt to our 'enlightened conceptions' overnight. The way that abolition was effected attempted
to force exactly that, upon them. Anyone who really studies the so-called Reconstruction period will see the gross injustice and corruption that was used to kowtow the new freedmen into line under the Northern
empire's illusion of postbellum democracy.
The Yankees grew up in all lily-white communities. What was good for
one puritan pilgrim was good for the other. They could get away with broad and general
conceptions about the brotherhood of man etc. In the South, however, things were different, and you couldn't apply a manufacturing/assembly line approach to all human beings. The Africans were one or two generations out of Africa. Many of them could barely speak English much less
appreciate many of the subtleties of our federal mechanism which had never surfaced before on their continent.
The point about all of this is that all of the European descended people bear responsibility for slavery, and the blacks as well, who
sold their own people into those boats. The Northern areas that became the most vociferous abolitionists had, two generations before, lined their pockets and built their entire industrial and commerical empire (which still rules with an iron fist to this day)
from the proceeds of the slave trade that their ships were in charge of directing. In fact, when you go back and study the Constitutional
conventions you will find that Jefferson and the Virginia delegation were trying to end the slave trade and to have it written into the
Constitution because they feared what might end up happening in the future if there were too many slaves in the South. It was Massachusetts that blocked it and had it extended
another 10-15 years because they were cashing in and didn´t want the flow to stop.
When it no longer was profitable to them and when they saw that the South was a prosperous region that could potentially become a more
powerful economic rival, they changed their course and became conscientious objectors to that 'peculiar institution'. The South was left holding the hot potato.
It became necessary to start a war, especially when the South dropped from the Union with the Constitutional right guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment, meanwhile cutting the 47% tariff that Lincoln had imposed on all foreign goods to 10%. Essentially, that meant that if you were a British ship sailing to the new world with a load of goods, you could then make a choice to go through New York City and pay 47% of what you were charging to ´Honest Abe´or 10% to Uncle Jeff. That doesn´t require much consideration, now, does it¿
That, my friend, is a more realistic cause for war than any BS about taking it upon themselves to 'free the slaves'.
Part 2-
ReplyDeletePerhaps the greatest injustice in the history of Western Civilization has been perpetrated against the Southern people, white and black, by the 'holier-than-thou' yankee, who is still trying to impress his particular vision of human rights and 'enlightened civilization' on
different peoples the world over. Look what we continue to do in the Middle East. Those people have no desire to have the type of government and 'rights' that we say they should have. In this sense they are not equal to us. That's not to say that we're better, it's just to say that we are DIFFERENT, not equal.
The mistake is to think that the crux of what the South was fighting for was to beat another race down. A civilization does not offer up
300,000 of its best and brightest just to save the asses of the snooty southern slave class. The victors write the history books and everything in American history since then, depends on this one particular interpration of those significant events from 1861-65.
Look at how 'neighborly' we are towards other countries in this world and tell me that something in our past doesn't stink to high heaven.
And the Africans have no business crucifying us for this anymore. We, the Southern whites, have done enough time in hell. They have been
given every opportunity possible. There will be ABSOLUTELY no talk about any form of reparations. Just wait and see what happens if the US government tries to pull this one over.
And besides, no one ever looks at the other side of the equation. The African Americans have also benefitted from their contact with our culture. They have access to a wide number of innovations and comforts that came solely
from the minds of those blue-eyed devils from Europe. And yet, they are certainly in no way grateful. In fact, they are still taught and encouraged by those same ol' do-gooders, to hate us and that we owe them the world. Enough is enough.
Now, go home and do some research, buddy boy, preferably from a book that was not published in New York City. And then come back and see
me, and let's have a real discussion...or a real war, where everyone knows who the actual good guys and bad guys are.
Don't bring a knife to a gunfight.
And finally, are you really willing to argue that, before 1865, there was no civilization worth speaking of¿...because that is what you seem to be saying in your post, since slavery has existed in some form or another in all civilizations since the beginning of our ´illustrious´ history as a human race.
I know you´re not really that presumptuous.
Come now...