BuckleBoy
Gold Member
Mainedigger said:To call the Stars and Bars racist is total crapola...Slavery was practiced and totally accepted by many of the founding fathers and was in practice when this country was founded and on going before the civil war in both the South AND North. Thus if the Stars and Bars are racist then so are the Stars and Stripes. The Civil War started over state rights and tarrifs....slavery was NOT an issue or a cause for the start of the war. Neither side was initially fighting to free or hold the slaves. In fact once slavery became an issue later in the war many Union soldiers deserted or threatened to desert. The abolitionists made slavery a cause, but it was not the reason the war started. The only time it should (and is) be illegal to fly the Confederate flag (or any other flag) is if it is flown over the Stars and Stripes.
Could I kindly clarify two things? First, the Confederate Flag pictured above is Not the "Stars and Bars." The Stars and Bars were actually the first National Flag of the Confederacy. It had three stipes and seven stars, keeping the same general look as the the North's flag during the same time. (More stars were added as more states seceeded.)
You are absolutely correct in that the CW was fought over states' rights--the main one being whether states could choose whether they wanted to be "slave states" or "free states" and whether territories could choose--and believe me, the white plantation owners wanted them to be slave states--as many as possible from the new West which had just opened up. Part of this was because the South got more representation based on population which included their slave "property," even when that "property" couldn't vote. So just to make it clear--Slavery wasn't the specific issue--but the ability for the South to dominate the Union in terms of representation, power, and economy through the spread of slavery was. (Look at how many of the first 10 Presidents were from Slave States, for example.) As I recall, the South also produced over 80% of the World's cotton on the eve of the war. The power struggle had been festering for decades--a complicated issue that was economic, social, and within the last three decades before the war--moral as well (due to the Abolitionists and their sympathizers). The Founding Fathers were aware of this, even though most of them held slaves. There had always been an intentionally even balance between slave and free states in the Union, as new states were formed.
States' and Territories rights to choose for themselves about Slavery was one of the BIG platform issues for both parties in the election of 1860. If you read Lincoln's "A House Divided" speech, that is clear--and of course it is all over the contemporary Democrats' speeches. Remember the Missouri Compromise? Bleeding Kansas? The right to choose upset the balance in power--in effect since the country's founding--and both sides North and South (which had traditionally been polarized by their differences in economy as well as their stance on Slavery and "property") began to see the other as attacking or defending the institution of slavery. Slaveholders rushed westward both for the new, cheap land, and also to ensure that the political machinery was in place for the state to choose to be a Slave State. For the South, this was not an issue of "property"--but one of economic independence and power! The Supreme Court and Federal Government had already upheld the South's rights to "slave property" in the Dred Scott decision. And the institution of slavery was in no way in immediate danger in the South (to threaten that in peacetime would've been a serious economic blunder for the economy of the Union as a whole). So in that regard, the issue of slavery cannot be listed as a "cause" for the war, as you've said--However, the aversion of many in the North to allowing the institution to expand throughout the West was seen as a trampling of the South's rights to self-governance and power in government.
And you are correct that the Abolitionists--especially Douglass and John Brown--polarized the public even more on the issue.
One of the primary causes of the war was actually Lincoln's election to office itself. Southern States saw the election results as the end of their rights--as well as their domination of the political and economic scene--in part because of the growing concern on both sides about the future of slavery (and with it, economy, property, lifestyle, wealth, and political monopoly by plantation owners). Most of the states that seceeded did so in the months immediately following the election, before Lincoln was actually sworn in.
While I can't sympathize with the Causes of the South's secession--I can CERTAINLY admire the courage and bravery it took to do so in the face of such odds.
P.S.--
The quote from Lincoln in the reply above this one is pretty cool... I didn't know that one--but he was right about the principles in that quote. LOL Kind of interesting in light of that quote the fact that he let the secession happen peacefully (even though he did denounce the right to seceed in his first inaugural speech! ).
-Buckleboy