re: What’s an American history hot take you’ve got?

(no message)

(no message)

A theory of mine is that the north was eager for the civil war because they didnt want all the black people to migrate north. In the format at that time, black slaves were fleeing in droves to the north. Eventually, significant amounts would have traveled north and slavery would have died out in the south. They obviously did not want this. Immediately ending slavery in the south caused all of the slaves to stay in the south and there was no plan to accommodate or integrate them. Then they were immediately given the right to vote, which was a ridiculous action at the time.

Just look up Randy Weaver. It wasn't an FBI agent as the other poster said, but Weaver sold a couple sawed-off shotguns to an ATF informant.

quote:

---

Nah, that ain’t what the founders believed.

---

As a descendant of those founders I will agree to disagree with your comment.

quote:

---

This nation was not intended to be a mongrel race of people with various religious and cultural beliefs.

---

According to the Democratic - Republican side, mixed ethnic and faith is what was intended. Now the Federalist wanted more of a monarchy / class system they had from various parts of Europe. Check your actual history. New Amsterdam (now New York) was not English. French were mostly hunters / trappers / wilderness folks who had no problem living with the Indians. Scotts and Irish wanted to be where the English did not go - like what is now Kentucky. Even early English settlements had more than just English settlers.

Case in point was the Virginia colony (now VA, WV, and KY) that was full of non English tradesmen to build and sustain the settlements. I think it was the Dutch, Norwegian, and other blond / blue eyed folks that allow Virginia to not fail, as it had done with just English in the first trip.

quote:

---

A theory of mine is that the north was eager for the civil war because they didnt want all the black people to migrate north.

---

As many went on to Canada, you may have issues.

Try this theory on for size

North had factories
South had resources

South preferred to ship their resources to England & France for higher quality finished goods. Think of European finished goods as the "brands" of today, and the North made the "generic" equivalent.

South can sell where they want, but if the North has factories but no resources from the South to make goods, they go broke.

quote:

---

We didn’t join WWII to save the Jews like a lot of people think.

---

I have never in my life encountered this belief.

quote:

---

Trying to predict the modern world without World War I is like trying to predict who would have won the Heisman in 1990 if a meteor had not wiped out the dinosaurs.

---

Well, truth be told, in a way I’m grateful WWI happened for a simple, and wholly selfish reason…

No WWI, no WWII

No WWII, my grandmother doesn’t meet my grandfather
(They met at a dance for soldiers about to ship off to the war)

No meeting of my grandparents, I never exist.

Oh boy. There's a lot of them.

Let me just give the biggest and most comprehensive one:

America is a leftist Protestant experiment and our entire history is about being liberal (in the sense of shirking what has worked for long periods of time in favor of something radically new).

In other words, leftist egalitarian abolitionist America is the real America. The current day "conservative" 1776 Americans derive their entire worldview from liberal revolutionaries who were willing to spill blood and burn down traditions/society for a radically new set of beliefs.

When your Fox News conservatives say that "those beliefs were right!" they make the exact same argument as victorious Russian Soviets in 1920. It was right because you won. Of course, American capitalism has "won" the recent history debate. And by recent I mean fewer than 100 years since 1945. But our current state is the blink of an eye in human history and it is far too early to judge its success. In fact, most conservatives will admit that our society is fraying and degrading in very important ways. The government instituted by the American founders appears to be a government suited to a very particular type of independent, literate, and adventurous people.

There are many poignant English critiques about why the American Revolution was hypocritical and disingenuous. But you will never, ever hear those arguments unless you seek them out. George Sydney Fisher's The True History of the American Revolution is a great starting point.

It really makes you wonder about what the world would look like with the combination of English empire and American power.

TL,DR: the American revolutionary story you grew up with has a lot of extremely leftist values and you never get to hear the opposing arguments.

quote:

---

For sheer downstream influence on human events, Gavrilo Princip is on an extremely short list alongside guys with names like Jesus. He fired two shots in an alley in Sarajevo and the shockwave is still expanding and reverberating more than a century later.

---

Agree 100%. The world as we know it today was born from WWI. I consider it the most pivotal world event since the discovery of the New World.