It's ironic people say the South was simply defending their homeland when they were the more aggressive party from the start. Either way, I don't see that as noble or courageous. Ukrainians defending their homeland from Russian despotism is courageous.
and right away you start with a misconception. I thought you were a history major. Were you pulling my leg?
I have to assume you are referring to Ft. Sumter. South Carolina only fired on it after the garrison there refused to leave. Since SC was no longer in the Union, they considered the federal lease on the property null and void. You can couch it however you like, but I don't consider SC the aggressor. They asked over a good length of time for the Union troops to leave peacefully, and they refused. Leave, not surrender. If I ask you to house sit and you refuse to leave when I come home, I'm going to physically throw you out if I can. And I wouldn't expect to be called the aggressor, the aggressor would be the trespasser who occupied my home and refused to leave.
This came up in a previous discussion with the board's most active virtue-signaler. I tried to allow that Sumter was at worst a gray area but of course he tried to turn that into a rationalization on my part. It's no such thing, but I'll allow with you that there's room for argument both ways based solely on the legalese of it. I'll call it a wash in terms of who aggressed who just for the sake of getting past it, but I don't consider the South to be an aggressor here.
After that the Battle of First Manassas was fought on Virginia soil, involving Union troops trying to get to Richmond to force a quick end to the war. THAT was the first act of aggression and there isn't much doubt that the UNION was the aggressor, and it can't be reasonably asserted that Confederate troops were not defending their own land.
So how do you claim what you do? You just claim it without regard to any factual substantiation. That's my main complaint with you liberals. If you make a claim, don't just throw it out there and wait to see if it gets challenged and then shape your argument to fit the challenge. Substantiate your claims up front so that they can be argued forthrightly.
So how is it not noble that the Confederate soldiers fought back the northern invasion of their soil? By what measure is that different from Ukraine defending their country?
I’m only pointing out that once in a blue moon, a war has sides in which one is clearly in the wrong. That was the South during our Civil War. And it doesn’t really matter how you dress it up just because genocide wasn’t involved. They were defending an indefensible institution built on the backs of those deemed racially inferior.
But let me rephrase something here: I didn't say there were 'good' guys and 'bad' guys here. I said it was preferable that one side won the conflict, both from a political and moral standpoint.
that you didn't say 'good guys and bad guys' is why I said it for you. You clearly make the South the bad guy here. Yet it was the north which prosecuted the South for doing what they had every Constitutional right to do. How does that not make the north the bad guy in terms of being responsible for the war itself. If they had simply left the South alone, there would have been no problem. And you can't claim slavery as an excuse. Lincoln clearly stated that he was not going after the South to end slavery. He clearly stated that he would not touch that institution, and he just as clearly said his only goal was to bring the South back in to the Union. And he didn't want to do that for the purpose of ending slavery, because slavery was alive and well in the north all during and long after the war; you can't dispute that. You're the history major, and not a virtue-signaling moron like strummer who creates the narrative to fit his emotional needs.
I'm not denying and have not denied that slavery had much to do with the secession of the Confederate States. I have not denied that slavery was an issue in that secession and I agree that it was unacceptable by our current sensibilities as well as being wrong by any interpretation of the golden rule, which is something that I believe in deeply and try to live by. Slavery needed to end.
But secession is not war. Secession was not unconstitutional, but denying the sovereignty of any of the States clearly was Constitutionally wrong. The north went after the Confederacy and the Confederacy fought back and defended their country, just as the Ukrainians are doing.
So far as your condemnation of the South on terms other than slavery is concerned, it's every bit just prejudicial bullshit. Those immigrants that were exploited in the north? Whereas slaves in the South were at least housed and fed, those immigrants were paid wages so low that they could afford neither to feed themselves or put a roof over their heads. They lived in terrible conditions of squalor for the most part. I could go on about flaws in the north but it's pointless because I'm not trying to find reasons to make the north the bad guy in that respect. The north was the bad guy in making the war happen, and that's all that matters. Conditions improved in the north and there's no reason to think that they wouldn't have also improved in the separate South along with technological innovation and mechanization, and eventually, changed attitudes.
You like WW II history. Are you aware of the basic reason that Hitler was able to gain power in Germany? It was because he gave the people hope for a new Germany that wasn't struggling so badly under the weight of the conditions imposed on them by the winners of WW I. The winners make the new rules, and those rules often make the losers resentful and even hostile. With the Civil War, the north ruined the South and then imposed conditions on it that made the people resentful and hostile. When people are resentful and hostile, they seek scapegoats. In Germany it was the Jews. In the South, it was the black man. That's wrong in any case, but it's also human nature. You can stupidly criticize human nature but you're just a fool if you deny it.
You'll say well, they deserved it because of slavery and I say that's complete, one-sided crapola. If one is honest and unbiased and looks at the bigger picture, one can see that the north was just a vengeful bitch, and that was due more to early Confederate success in the war along with simple, basic cultural differences. The north and the South had actually become two separate entities in that respect, and the real villainy here is that where the South had no desire to impose itself on the north, the north had and still has a strong desire to impose itself on the South.
The best and wisest conquerors and occupiers over the centuries are the ones who treated the vanquished with respect and allowed them to be as they were before. Look at Alexander, and us after WW II with both Germany and Japan. And DON'T look at the north of the Civil War in that respect.
The reason there are so many Southern sympathizers today is the same as the reason there were so many in the north at the time of the Civil War. They aren't the ones who are so deeply and wrongheadedly prejudiced.
NOTE; I had to delete the bulk of your post in order for mine to be allowed. I guess yours was overly long.
