462
Answer her, Daphne
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
462 points (100.0% liked)
Political Memes
7577 readers
2753 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
There's a problem with this argument.
Confederate states actually controlled the federal government prior to their succession, and strongly opposed states' rights to ignore federal laws like the Escaped Slaves act. Wisconsin and Vermont had judges and legislators who declared any individual who reached their borders to be free.
Abraham Lincoln had declared opposition to slavery, but said that he would not impose federal law on the states, and had not even threatened to free slaves before the war began.
So while the Civil War did have a lot to do with states' rights, the Confederates were opposed to them and the Union supported them. This led to the secession, which sort of flipped the script, because then it was Confederate states demanding the right to leave the Union, and the Union saying "no" to that particular demand. It had very little to do with telling Southern States that they could not keep slaves, although there is plenty of reason to expect that it would have gone in that direction without the Civil War. Abolitionists were gaining ground, and Lincoln was morally opposed to it, so it the Confederate states had a reasonable expectation that they would eventually be forced to end slavery, but it hadn't happened before the start of the war.
To be sure, the Confederacy was a traitorous band of anti-American bigots seeking to create a tyrannical ethnostate of christofascists (fuck, why does that sound familiar?). However, in this case, the answer to Velma's question in this case is not "keep slaves" but is instead "secede."
the secession papers of many states announcing the superiority of the white man and their god given right to own slaves flies in the face of this pretty hard.
yeah, you're right that the confederacy counter-intuitively wanted federal control over state control but that was specifically about forcing the north to return escaped slaves. thinking it was about a state's right to seceed is circular af, too. why did they want to seceed in the first place? the abolition movement and the refusal of the federal government to help the south enforce slavery.
The secession papers specifically cite the failure of the federal government to enforce the federal law, which is exactly what I said. You've restated what I said in your second paragraph, which flies in the face of your first paragraph.
Secession was not he reason for secession. Secession was the only issue in which the Confederate states advanced states' rights as an argument supporting their position.