Still, I don't think people, despite their intentions, who fought for a side in a war that at its core was standing on the principal of their right to own other human beings are heroes. Tragic heroes, perhaps. Not heroes.
As immature as it seems, you don't know how a person may react... To answer that scenario, I wouldn't be on the front line... I would've been Grant's right hand man..
I didn't say nobody wanted to abolish slavery, just that very few openly supported it. They basically believed it should be allowed to die out on its own. You can co-exist, but not consider someone equal. Obviously I can't tell you exactly how anyone felt. Your right that maybe there some, but there certainly weren't many who weren't racist. Civil Rights laws would have been coming a lot earlier than the 1960s if there had been. I agree about it being hard to follow. History wishes it could forget.
Real talk... Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and whomever else repped the Confederacy can kiss my azz in the afterlife....
http://www.civilwarhome.com/leepierce.htm Not a hero. Tragic in my mind that men (not just Lee) of otherwise good character and worth were so badly aligned against the way of the righteous on this issue. Edit: I do think we should be careful how we judge though and remember that these were men (Lee as an example) who were desperately hoping to avoid a war that would see their homes and families devastated. Their moral convictions against slavery were easy to compromise when they saw that to change meant war.
I'm serious in that you don't need to consider Robert E. Lee or any confederate soldier a hero. You can even choose to hate him. I don't consider him my hero, but I do have respect for him.
I would rep you if I could. You've probably had the best posts in this thread. I can't believe I started out this thread joining in on the joke (hopefully nobody takes my initial post seriously).
There are no heroes. Lincoln was just fine with letting slavery continue until it became politically expedient to alter his stance. Heck, he recognized Liberia as a nation simply because he, like many other white folks of his time, thought that a plausible "solution" to non-slave black uprisings was to preemptively ship them all back to Africa. People are just that. People. Flawed in some ways, heroic in others. Maybe. There's nothing absolute about it.
I agree. I think when people talk about Lincoln though and sort of discredit him for not being as pro-abolition as history would like him to be they are doing history a disservice. It wasn't as simple as being for or against racial harmony and the end of slavery. These people had been indoctrinated for generations to see black people as another ace of creatures. Sub-human. At the time of the civil war you had a large number of Americans who had evolved beyond that reality but were still struggling to accept the demons they would bare because of that reality. They also faced the real truth that waiving a magic wand and making slavery go away wasn't an option. They couldn't just unring the bell. This evil had plagued the nation and become such a part of it that to resolve the issue meant war. How many times have you had a disagreement with your brother, mother, neighbor, friend etc. where you decided it wasn't worth the fight? Imagine what it had to be like for people who were against slavery to think "To fight this fight means a war that will leave my neighbors and friends dead." It's not hard to imagine them attempting to rationalize their way out of that reality.
Trying to move it into the D&D I see... with a genuinely asinine statement. You had me until that part. I won't get into slavery vs. states' rights or any of the other issues revolving around it, but painting "North" as good and "South" as evil is a little too convenient. Nicely packaged, though. I agree, if you're going to honor anything about the civil war, honor American lives lost on both sides and be grateful for the outcome which did end in the abolishment of the travesty of slavery in America, and returned us to one Union. Lastly, AR "celebrating" this on MLK day is pretty offensive, though I would guess (hope)they started celebrating it before the day became recognized as MLK day. You'd think they'd revisit that.
I agree that some Confederate supporters probably fought for their home or whatnot... But once you agreed to sign up, you became part of that "dark" stigma... So I can't respect it... As far as Lincoln, he signed the papers ...so he alright with me(even if he opposed..WGAD)... History itself is a clouded topic... Most of the stuff we have been taught and studied was from a 3rd person's point of view anyway... The key is to learn from it and to avoid going through it again... Does it bother me that Georgia(or whatever state it is) still flies the Confederate flag??..No.. It just shows those lawmakers don't care for the "negative aspect " of it's symbolism, but wanna use it as a show of it's "history"...
One of my most favorite Onion headlines: "South Postpones Rising Again for Yet Another Year" http://www.theonion.com/articles/south-postpones-rising-again-for-yet-another-year,377/
