Slavery in American? Why is the south called racist? Boston was the HUB of slave trading.?

Grant had slaves until the end of the war. Gen. Robert E. Lee freed his years before the war. There were more slaves in the north in the years prior to the Civil war than there were in the south.

Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Horace greeley stated that "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery"

Read it here:http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/sp...

The Civil War wasn't at all about slavery. it was about preserving the Union. When Lincoln saw that the war was being lost 2 years after the start of the war...then he "freed" the slaves.

General Robert E. Lee, a confidant of jefferson Davis (Confederate president) told Jeff davis to free the slaves before the oncoming war or else it would go down in history as a war to free the slaves instead of a war for states rights. Davis was stubborn and did not want to do that. And so there the biggest blunder in history was made.

Today, school books tell us that the Civil war was a war to free the slaves and the south has the stigma of being slave holder states.

Rarely do you read that the North was just as bad or even worse. Even former slaves who fled to the north found out that they weren't wanted there either. Most of the free slaves went to Canada.

And the "great emancipator" Abraham Lincoln?

He hated that title.

The actual hub for slavery was Rhode Island and the most infamous slave trader was who Brown University is named after a "Ivy League Liberal Arts College". The Civil war was not fought simply because of slavery. It was mostly fought due to the norths move to an industrial society and the souths opposition of wanting to remain a agricultural society. Hence causing the war of northern aggression AKA the civil war. Slavery was simply a way to get backing from the majority of Northerners who were opposed to slavery because of their view on human rights at the time.

In fact many southerners did not even own slaves during the time of the civil war. There were more blacks who owned slaves in states like Louisiana during the time of civil war than whites. Racist inhumane ignorance is the stigma that people of the south are now stuck with due to others who do not read history books and like to feel better than their fellow southern american citizens.

Actually, it was initially New York City.

Your generalization re: ALL were imported to the North is wrong. Many came into Charleston, SC and other Southern ports.

Maggie - your position is ludicrous.

And to all who call "it" "The War of Southern Secession" or "The War of Northern Aggression" - they were rats jumping ship thinking they'd be better off - they could keep their slaves. Lincoln precipitated the treason simply by being elected.

They (South) started it - they had NO legal basis to support them and it's actually The War of Southern Aggression. Who did what first?

I'm sick of everybody postulating b.s. theories under the guise of patriotic devotion to a Country that was NOT a sovereign nation.

In short - traitors.

Truth be told, and it seldom is, places like Chicago, Detroit, etc. are more racist than the south is. In fact, during the '70's, there were many studies done on this very topic that came to this very conclusion.

You don't hear people make reference to blacks selling blacks anymore. It's taboo! But even during the 1990's, Louis Farrakhan made comment to the fact that blacks still sell blacks into slavery in Africa. Especially around the Ivory Coast.

Next time you look at the New York City flag, tell me what you see on it? Black people picking cotton. Image if that same imagine was on a flag from Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, etc. We wouldn't hear the end of it!

Sounds more like a comment than a question. Why is the south called racist? Because it is. (Not every person, but the majority.) The Jim Crow laws took MUCH longer to die in the south. A lot more lynchings happened in the south. Whites working for civil rights were murdered in the south. Yeah, at one time the whole country was racist and that's what you're referring to, then people gradually got a clue. Of course it's easier to get a clue when your whole livelihood ISN'T based on slavery. The northerners weren't better people, they just weren't growing cotton and sugar cane they couldn't harvest themselves. (The surviving slaves were stronger and more resistant to disease than the whites and they were cheaply bought.) You're right though implying the Civil War was not about slavery. It was about states' rights.

The south wasn't called racist. Nor were they deemed racist, because what they were doing was fairly natural at the time and not considered racism. I mean, is having a pet inhumane or cruel? No. It is what you do with or to your pet/slave. And having men and women work for you is not inhumane either; it is the way you treat the worker. And they may be forced to work, but they are getting food and shelter in return. Many at the time would deem that a fair trade. But not today.

And, selling people slaves, then later declaring it illegal. It is like selling people "insert object", then declaring it illegal to own it.

What would have been a better solution to slavery, would be declaring that the next generation of slave babies be free citizens of the USA. And have all adult slaves free after "insert number of years here (ex: 5 yrs.)" of work on their plantation. Giving the South an oportunity to think for the future about their plantation, instead of just halting their whole economy (effect of the war).

The only ones calling the south racist are the people of today, because we today explode on the facts that given to us. If you lived back then, and no one told you slaves were bad, you wouldn't think anything of slaves. But today we teach generation after next that it was bad. Which is why many people today have the outlook on things like this today.

Maggie has a great answer. She went for actual facts of the war, while I went for ideaology.

Wow, alot of great answers here, mostly just copy paste, but hey, you'd get bored typing all of that stuff.

Why was the South called racist? Because they kept slavery and its inhumane actions. Boston gave up slave trading in the early 1800s, and the slave trade itself was banned in 1808 per act of Congress. Not to say the Northern states were not racist, but they at least got rid of slavery in the early 1800s, and formed a number of societies to end slavery or stop its spread.

Incidentally, it needs to be remembered that most Northerners were not abolitionist - they were free soilers. They didn't want slavery to be ended - they just simply wanted it to be contained, feeling that, as previous practice had showed, Southerners needed to spread West to find more and more fertile lands as cotton and tobacco leached nutrients out of the soil and made it less and less fertile. Being called an abolitionist was bad - Garrison, for example, was almost killed by a mob in Boston in the 1830s, and Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist preacher in Alton, Illinois WAS killed around that same time.

After 1808 (save the illegal trafficking in slaves - see the Amistad case), the only slave trading was internal, and not importation, and that was all Southerners selling to other Southerners.

Maggie A, your claim that the North had more slaves than the South is so bizarrely wrong I don't know what to say. The South had the stigma of being slaveholding states BECAUSE THEY WERE!!!

Bcpmt, your reading of history is...interesting. You seem to be some sort of secession backer. Unfortunately, the facts don't bear out your argument. (Fortunately, neither did military matters...)

First up, the Constitution:

Amendments IX and X have nothing to do with the confederation of 1783, but as you know, the Bill of Rights to the Constitution, the document which superceded the Articles of Confederation. Right of secession is not only NOT guaranteed in Article IV, but the issue isn't even expressly raised. If you want a good Constitutional argument, check out Article VI: "This Constitution...shall be the supreme Law of the Land" - ie, superior to the states.

So what if Virginia and New York wrote that they would have the right to secede if they wanted to? The Federal government easily ignored that. The federal government swept aside any and all of these conditional agreements. I don't know where you claim Madison agreed with the idea of secession for Virginia - he was a Federalist (PUBLIUS in fact, with Hamilton and Jay), and when pressed by Hamilton over the issue, which had arisen in NY as well, had stated in his official capacity as a Congressman that Congress WOULD NOT CONSIDER A CONDITIONAL RATIFICATION TO BE VALID (see page 285 of volume 18 of the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution).

As for the history:

The South was NOT a sovereign nation. It was never recognized as a legitimate country by any other country in the world. I guess the crux of our disagreement is on our reading of this. I see the secession as illegal. You apparently do not.

Your reading of the events of 1860 is also ... interesting. "The democratically elected representatives of the Southern people" - Who would these Southern people be? Not the slaves, not women, not the poor yeomen farmers, not the landless city dwellers. Just the richest and most elite plantation owners. Hardly the true representatives of the people. The representatives of those few granted the franchise, sure.

Also, to discuss secession only with regards to 1860 totally ignores the precedents which had made secession a dirty word - the Hartford Convention, and the South Carolina Nullification crisis, both of which had shown that secession was not acceptable. The fact that people brought up the idea of secession before then doesn't mean that it was accepted. The 1803 protest over the Louisiana Purchase, the 1812 protest over the statehood of Louisiana and the protests over the war of 1812 were pretty small and easily dismissed. Although it may have been bandied about pre-War of 1812, the "second war of Independence" led to a stronger sense of nationalism and a backlash against any attempts or even discussions of secession. Ask the Federalist Party how well it worked out for them when a few members brought up the idea at the Hartford Convention, which was only a minority view and exceedingly unpopular even within the convention. Incidentally, the New England states did NOT threaten to secede. A small faction of the Hartford Convention discussed the idea and were pretty much ignored, and the larger body ultimately said that if their demands were not met, they should have another convention where they might discuss secession in greater detail. (See the Hartford Convention resolutions) As for SC, even other Southern states refused to back SC on that one. Johnson did send warships to Charleston Harbor, which, based on the lack of impeachment, doesn't seem to have been an impeachable offense, as you claim.

As for Lincoln, the Civil War WAS a war to keep the Union together, and any respected historian would agree. Your paean to the South's right to secede misses one key point: why did the Southern states secede? Because they were sore losers. Even with the 3/5ths compromise, they had lost the election of 1860, had previously lost control of the House and the Senate and now feared for the future of slavery. The Southern states started seceding even before Lincoln took office, fearing he would abolish slavery (a silly fear, since he was not an abolitionist, until the South forced him to be as a matter of winning the war). How did the war actually start? The South Carolina attack on a federal fort. Doesn't sound like Northern Aggression to me. ( I suppose Afghan people are calling the US invasion a similar thing...)

I'm not sure where you got Lincoln saying the EP was his "greatest folly". I've never heard that one before and I googled the phrase and literally nothing save your claim came up. Please back this one up - I fear it's a fabrication. I'd love to know where you got it from, if he actually did say it.

Finally, your claim that "only a small minority of southerns still owned slaves in 1860" is a bit of a weasel - while that is true, those who owned the slaves were the richest and most important people in southern society and politics, dominating all political and economic matters in the South.

Thanks for a thought-provoking post all the same.

Update - bc - Thanks for the clarifications. I'm going to do more digging into this, but I'll maintain that secession is still illegal, and not sanctioned by the constititution. I'm also going to assume that your reference to the weakness of Article I section 8's powers granted to the federal government is sarcasm (war, taxation, etc seem pretty strong to me). I'll also look into the Wendell Phillips comment - I've never come across it before and also want to look into the context. Thanks again.

Why can't more Yahoo Answer discussions be this intellectual and enlightening?

yeah, i know! but the south wanted to keep the slaves, and were big on plantations and stuff, when the north tried to free the slaves. the north was also bigger on industries and factories and stuff like that

Hope that helps

General Grant actually owned a slave named William Jones, acquired from his father-in-law. At a time when he could have desperately used the money from the sale of Jones, Grant signed a document that gave him his freedom.

Grant freed this slave in 1859.

As for Grant "owning slaves during the Civil War" - Julia Dent, Grant's wife, had the use of four slaves as personal servants; THE RECORD IS UNCLEAR AS TO WHO HELD LEGAL TITLE TO THEM (IT COULD WELL HAVE BEEN JULIA'S FATHER). Julia Dent hired out the four slaves she owned. These slaves were all freed by 1863.

Julia's father, Colonel Frederick F. Dent, a Missouri planter, lived until 1873.

Boston sucks, go NY Yankees!