Civil War myth.
- Locked due to inactivity on Aug 4, '16 4:30pm
Thread Topic: Civil War myth.
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It only makes sense that we'd think of the Emancipation Proclamation as the law that freed the slaves; "emancipation" is right there in the title. It's like calling something the "Patriot Act" and then not legislating that everyone wear American flags capes, festoon their cars with airbrushed bald eagles and sing that Lee Greenwood song at dinner every night. Of course the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. What else would it do?
Why it's Bulls---: It freed some of them. Thanks to a loophole, about a million individuals were still legally slaves after the EP (there were about four million slaves in captivity at the time; it declared three million of them free). The loophole was that the proclamation only applied to states and territories "in rebellion against the United States." In short, if you were a slave in Delaware, Kentucky or even the recently-captured Confederate territories of New Orleans or Tennessee ... sorry, but your freedom-princess was in another castle. -
This may sound bad, but I always wanted to have a slave.
But yeah, that loophole is not good. -
Ask a Southern Civil War enthusiast what the Civil War was really about, and he will probably give you one answer: States' rights. Ask anybody else and they'll probably give you another answer: Slavery. And if you think we're diving into that s---storm here and now, you're mistaken. But it does reveal something about how most of us perceive the Civil War -- that the North was on the right side of history because they understood the fundamental truth that all men, no matter what color, were created equal.
Why it's Bulls---: The North was so prejudice that white people actually discriminated against other white people. So you can bet that life was not a bowl of cherries for nonwhites. And for blacks, the 19th century was nothing but a bowl of crap, no matter where you lived. True, the North had a larger number of abolitionists and progressives, but they also had blatantly racist laws preventing free black people from actually getting rights as citizens. And also, lynch mobs. Which was why it was the North, not the South, that hosted the country's most violent race riot in history. What started out as a protest against the Union's draft policy, ended as a full-on assault on any African-Americans unfortunate enough to exist and get caught. Back in those days, freed blacks were exempt from the draft, probably so they could put more time into putting out their racially motivated house fires. This exemption didn't sit well with poor whites who couldn't afford the $300 to buy their way out of the draft -- and by "didn't sit well" we mean "infuriated to the point of a frenzied rage." By the end of the four-day riot, at least 11 blacks were lynched throughout Manhattan, hundreds more were assaulted and a children's orphanage was burned to the ground. It took no less than 4,000 federal troops fresh from Gettysburg to subdue the insurrection. New York City's black residents were so terrorized by the riots that by 1865, the black population plunged to the lowest it had been in 45 years. And if you're thinking the Draft Riots were one little blip in an otherwise happy and racially harmonic region, try again. Town Line, New York, successfully seceded from the Union altogether during the war and were not readmitted to the nation until ... no joke, 1946.
If you want to know more of the other four myths go here:
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My history teacher would love you.
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History teachers always love me. Every story has two sides to it, sadly only the winning side gets to tell their tale.
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"History is written by the victors."
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Indeed!
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My old geography teacher loved that quote. ^_^
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My geography teacher just put the big chested people in the front of the class.
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