this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
178 points (98.9% liked)
Fire Memes for Traitor Haters
288 readers
420 users here now
Where we meme (joking in tone and detail, serious in sentiment) about General Sherman, the Civil War, and how the secesh traitors had it coming.
RULES
-
No bigotry. The Union, or at least the part of the Union WE support, fought AGAINST that shite. We are anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, anti-transphobic, and in general anti-bigot here, even if not all the lads in Union blue uniforms were.
-
No Confederate sympathizing. Anti-democratic racist slaver traitors don't deserve shit.
-
Follow all Lemmy.world rules
founded 5 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You are correct that there was more going on at the time than only slavery. However, slavery was the primary catalyst the tipped the scales far enough for open rebellion, so it isn't wrong to say that the civil war was about slavery
Edit: not that you did say it was wrong per se, but bringing up all the other nuance leaves room for the people arguing in bad faith to say it wasnt about slavery, despite the primary argument being about if other states had the right to force other states to obey their slave laws. There's a time and place for it, such as people genuinely interested in the deeper history of that time. In the current climate, it tends to come off as dismissive to the root cause.
Mate...
It's more important to understand how enough people can be tricked into fighting a civil war than ever.
Now is the time for people to know about it, because it really looks like it could happen again.
I think you misunderstood what I meant. There's a notable amount of people what try to deflect and say that the civil war was in fact not about slavery and point to all the discourse surrounding state rights/federal overreach. However true that may be, the entire reason that discourse even took place was because of slavery, so the civil war was definitely about slavery. I was simply stating that bringing up all the other information is unnecessary/counterproductive 99% of the time in casual conversation.
And the correct response is that the South was the one wanting a strong federal government with the ability to force states to follow laws that weren't laws in their own state, while the North was the one fighting for "states rights"
You don't fight misinformation with more misinformation.
I disagree.
I think when we're staring down civil war 2.0, it's important for people to understand deeper than a single word, because a single word doesn't explain why the war happened.
Distilling it down to just that one word just validates the misinformation from the South, hundreds of years later when no American has an excuse to not know what really happened.
"Conservatives" are literally still trying to force others to do what they want while disquising it as "freedom" so obviously the details still matter and it's worth the couple minutes (and usually downvotes) to get specific
What misinformation? Please tell me how it wasn't ultimately about slavery.
But again, slavery is exactly why the war happened. But if you wanted to get truly technical, the war was fought to preserve the Union. Preventing secession was the formal justification that North declared for going to war with the Confederacy.
Regardless, my main point is that every time a "Confederate/Rebel pride" person talks about the civil war not being about slavery, they inevitably bring up the whole state rights vs federal power debate to try and detract from it ultimately being about slavery.