COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA TODAY
Kentucky to speed up
relocation of Confederate monuments after Charlottesville violence
in neighboring Charlottesville,
Virginia
The great irony of these matters is that the Civil War was
not about slavery. Lincoln himself said that if that if he could, he would end
the war and keep slavery in place.
The war was about states' rights, a matter which had
troubled American politics and affairs since the country’s founding.
Few people realize how consequential the Civil War was. An
estimated 600,000 people died in the 1860s. Nearly a century later, in WWII, a
war that in total killed over 50 million, American total losses were about 300,000.
The Civil War monuments are history as surely as any
anywhere, but public sensibilities and politics change, and it is stupid to
fight over the fact.
_____________________
Response to a comment
about slavery dying out:
Sorry, but you are wrong about slavery.
Slavery actually evolved into something new and more hideous
near the time of the Civil War. Individual slave workers disappeared on the
great estates to be replaced by gang-slavery, a system of chaining together
large blocks of men who then moved through the fields much like a machine.
It was a big improvement in pure efficiency terms. Slave
agriculture became more competitive.
If you read the scholarly book, Years on the Cross, you will see how slavery evolved and would
have evolved more. It would have been a very long time before it died a natural
death, if indeed it ever did.
_____________________
Response to another
comment about few Southerners having slaves:
This is not accurate.
Many comparatively modest farmers owned a slave or two.
In some cases, they were women and were used for sex. Indeed,
at the slave auctions, some women were featured openly for their attractions.
The result is that there is not a single black American
today without genes from European types.
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Response to another
reader comment:
“defeated Christian Civilization"?
Bizarre, and with the tone of some of the extreme Internet
sites.
Lincoln did consciously want the central government to gain
authority over the states.
In that sense, he finished the unfinished work of creating a
nation.
It had nothing to do with Christianity. Many of the most
prominent founders were not Christians but Deists or even atheists, very
stylish beliefs of the period in Europe. This included Washington, Jefferson,
Franklin, and others.
___________________________
Response to another
reader’s comment:
Of course, it's obvious you cannot change history.
But our memorials and books change all the time, taking on
new emphasis or indeed changing an interpretation.
By the way, it was real history, but there are not many
monuments to Benedict Arnold in America. And none that I know of to the
Loyalists, decent people who were terribly abused by the “Patriots.” And, there
is no major monument to slavery itself. Certainly not in Washington.
_________________________
Response to another
reader comment about “Lee was right”:
Sorry, Lee was never a politician. He did what he saw as his
duty when asked.
