(Cont. from Part 1) The same was true in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, in which federal power was used to extend slavery. Even prior to 1850, John C. Calhoun - the patron saint of neo-Confederate states-right advocates - insisted that free states suppress any abolitionist agitation within their own borders. The slaveowners always gave the preservation and extension of slavery priority over any consideration of states rights.
The Old South of the antebellum times may have "stood for something more than hate," as a character in a Kate Campbell song ("Look Away") puts it. But the Confederacy of 1861-65 stood for slavery.
And the people who fought for it understood that very well. That's why it's more than a little weird to hear people claim they are "honoring" Southerners who fought for the Confederacy by promoting a pretty lie about what their cause involved. The Confederacy's leaders and supporters were proud of the fact that they were defending their "sacred institutions of slavery and white supremacy." What use is it today to pretend they weren't the flawed human beings that they were?
Confederate apologists frequently point to the fact that Northerners, including Lincoln, also had racist ideas. That has nothing to do with the fact that the slaveowners staged a rebellion to defend slavery, unless it's to emphasize how deluded they were in imagining that Lincoln and the "Black Republicans" (as they called them) were bent on destroying slavery in the South. But it's safe to say that Lincoln during his lifetime made more positive contributions to freedom for the slaves and for race relations in the future than most any other individual of his day.
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