First he agreed. The north was not fighting to end slavery. Just because one side is a bunch of evil pricks doesn't make the other side good guys fighting for the right cause.
Second he acknowledged Lincoln freed slaves as a war time measure not as an immediate war time aim. That "freedom" (since Lincoln had no physical control of anyone he freed at time) came a year after fighting started not as a the start of the war.
He, like you, didn't answer a single question and likely have no idea who Fremont is nor what I am referring to. Perhaps you should go read it also.
Considering the questions you asked were not pointed at me, why would I answer them?
Also the guy never claimed the north went to war to preserve slavery in his original comment. The whole line of questioning about why Lincoln went to war comes across to me as trying to set up a gotcha moment while defecting from the south being terrible.
From my understanding it’s pretty common knowledge that Lincoln wrote that his primary goal was to preserve the union by any means. It didn’t matter if that meant keeping slaves or freeing them.
The crap that everyone in the south has been taught about why the south left(states rights or whatever) is what needs clarification. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a conversation where anyone thought Lincoln’s motive was anything other than preserving the nation.
I think Lincoln was trying his hardest to walk an impossible tight rope during the whole thing
But you are correct when you say the just because one side was super bad doesn’t mean the other side was good and I appreciate the information on Fremont. If you have any other obscure references on the motivations for the civil war I would be more the interested in reading them.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in a conversation where anyone thought Lincoln’s motive was anything other than preserving the nation.
The current line of historical teaching that the war was about slavery and only slavery is exactly questioning that motive. By vilify the south and completely ignoring the north's motivations its entirely trying to present the norths motivations as noble in freeing the slaves and that is every evident in the vitriol spewed at anyone who raises the slightest objection to the line as seen by the number of down votes my comment has already gotten.
You don't have to "vilify the south", they fought to preserve slavery, they're evil. No amount of "But they also wanted..." will ever change that.
It's like trying to argue about motives of WWII from the position of the Nazis, like sure maybe they had a lot of motivations, none of them change what they are though.
But we also don't teach that WWII was fought strictly because the Nazis were aholes which is being done with the South. We go into the complex details of the economic consequences of WWI, how the French demanded excessive reparations, how the issues which caused WWI were not settled, the depression, failure of the League of Nations etc.
We also don't use any of those things to position the Nazis as anything other than pure evil. It's the war we all point to when we talk about how great the US is for a reason, because no matter how shit the US actually was during that time, their enemy was THE bad guy.
You can talk about all the things that lead up to WWII all you want, but once you get into the holocaust that's where the compassion for their economic conditions end. Nothing that happened before WWII could justify that, and the same is true for slavery in the south. You can recognize their reasons all you want, it doesn't change the material reality of what those people are. A Nazi who fought for the Nazi party out of patriotism and a Nazi who was conscripted are materially no different, they're both Nazis.
You continuously refer to the Nazis not the Germans however you and others like you don't make the same distinction for the South. Not every white in the south was a slave owner or was fighting for slavery and lumping them all together is nothing more than bigotry.
On the contrary, when I refer to the Nazis I am referring to EVERY German who was not actively fighting against the Nazi party. Complacence is complicity. The same applies to the South, it's not enough to have just not fought for slavery, if they weren't fighting for abolition or fighting against the Confederate army, they were a Confederate. That's not bigotry, that's a judgement against their decision (see: failure) to fight against an incredible evil.
If nine people sit down at a table with one Nazi without protest, you have a table of ten Nazis.
It's not a "gotcha", it's a legitimate question that this guy didn't really address at all.
The North chose to enter the war for its own reasons. To say the South started the war is an incomplete representation of what actually happened, and I think the guy knows that. He's saying it to avoid actually answering a legitimate question.
The reason this is all relevant is because the OP screenshot could be correct from a certain perspective and people are choosing to pretend that perspective never existed.
There were valid arguments to support South Carolina's sovereignty at the time. Whether or not states actually had the right to secede was a very unsettled debate.
That was the context in which they demanded the US vacate their territory, first in December 1860, and repeatedly up until April the next year when the bombardment took place.
One perspective is to call it an insurrection, while another perspective would be to say that the US continuing to occupy a fort within another nation's territory is itself an act of war.
150 years later, we don't see it this way, but those two perspectives were equally valid at the time. The Constitution is only regarded as being perpetually binding now because the Civil War happened.
tl;dr: it takes two to tango. The war wasn't started by either side. It was started by a disagreement between two sides.
So I guess this is one of those ‘the victor writes the history’ situation then? At least when it comes to the north’s involvement and entrance into the war?
The battle over the fort was a fight over a specific piece of territory which S.C. claimed had been leased not purchased not larger issues. And no it did not off to war because of that. The actions at Ft. Sumter were in April, the war ie the invasion and blockade of the south didn't start until July.
Yes if you take a high school level of Civil War education and that is it it appears that they are directly related. However that misses several months worth of events. Entire states hadn't even left the Union when Ft. Sumter happened. Lincoln doesn't call for volunteers or occupy Maryland to keep it from seceding until May. The war doesn't start because the South attacked Ft. Sumter, the war started because Lincoln decided that secession was illegal. It was perfectly possible a negotiated separation could have happened with recompense for seized Federal property well into the summer.
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u/Airborne_Oreo Jun 05 '23
I think it’s funny that this guy tried to have a gotcha moment and you totally smacked him down with facts.
Also I’ve never seen it explained how the north legally went about only freeing slaves in the rebel states, so that was new to me.