For instance, mainiac, protective tariffs,
... is a massive anachronism considering that tarrifs were very low and the nullification crisis was three decades past. The reason why people say it was slavery and it's that fucking simple is because people come back with lazy did not do the research shit like this constantly. Slavery was a huge fucking issue. Tarrifs policy was extremely accomodating towards the south.
Yes...it had been, if by 'extremely accomodating' you mean 'in constant tension' with the way slavery had been making congress balance every proposal for new states. If a Yankee can be elected president without a single Souther elector
And in retrospect, slavery is focused on the most because it's the thing that made the winners look best.
People who dont have any evidence for their views will come up with narratives for how their views might be right.
There's irony somewhere in that statement. The real irony, not the 'oh how ironic' stuff about coincidences.
If it was just a righteous crusade against racism, why weren't Native Americans offered citizenship until 1890? Not to mention the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This was largely a war to keep the South under control, providing raw materials to Northern industry at low prices. Abolition was just a better rallying cry, and a fortunate result (which wasn't actually guaranteed until the war was nearly over).
Separate but equal.
It's perfectly consistent to believe that a people are lesser than you, and simultaneously believe that slavery is immoral to be put upon any person.
I need that on a plaque somewhere.
Dont worry, confederate revisionists have put thousands of them all over the country.
That's cute, coming from someone in Maryland.
Otherwise known as the state that was on the right side of history when push finally came to shove.
That's worth a big ol' laugh, considering what I remember. Me Dad lives in Baltimore, too, so it ain't like I'm unfamiliar with the place, having visited every summer for the first 15 years of my life.
Only reason Maryland didn't secede is because Lincoln basically put out an executive order and suspended/arrested the state legislature to prevent it, in worry of what would happen if Washington DC was surrounded. Hell, if Lincoln had been opposed to slavery from the beginning of the war (in the sense of 'no slaves for anyone if we win' from the get-go), probably still would have, along with a few more of the border states.
Eh, RedKing beat me to it. Although the rebel scum line...I mean, I just gotta say, you
really hate your countrymen, don't you?
But please, tell me more of this "right side of history" you were talking about? The end justifies the means, I suppose?
60,000 enlistments for the Union army vs a third that number for the CSA?
Oh, so 3x as many enlistments?
On the side that had 3x as large a population?
How odd, that doesn't seem like basic numbers at all, I mean really quite strange, you know. Certainly nothing to do with Southerners who wanted state's rights/individual rights seeing a draft as just as much tyranny as the North, or it being easier to sell 'for the union and god and morality!' than 'these northerners will ruin our economy' to the average layfolk. Doesn't mean 'for independence and freedom and what our country was founded on!'
There were plenty of German-American spies during WWII, I know that much, Grim Portent. Odds are there were
some Japanese-Americans who were spies too. Doesn't mean internment camps are okay for anyone, nor really is arresting someone for harboring rebel sympathies, in my opinion. Lincoln was technically the aggressor, and if Maryland had seceded before the first shots were fired...well, who knows how history would have gone. Seems very strange to me sometimes when we find it acceptable to suspend democracy if we want to place that as our founding principle.
I mean, if you want to go for best outcomes overall, then democracy can be fairly shit most of the time, it just avoids the worst of things like succession wars and horrible oppression of the common rich person (we were founded by landholders, not noblemen). But if you want to have it as your founding principle, stick with it at least, won't you? I still remember reading a thing about the suggestion that democracy might need to be suspended in the interests of helping the climate (not in America, thankfully). Which gave me a much greater insight into the actual fears of climate skeptics. :/