re: How do you feel about Mississippi's "Confederate Heritage Month"?

You got your arse kicked in two threads yesterday so now you're back for easy redemption with low hanging fruit. Take your L from yesterday and go silent for a bit.

Feel free to leave the great state of Mississippi if this offends you.

I always thought Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley made his position on slavery very clear. He was fighting to save the Union, ending slavery was a by product.

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.

I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

Yours,
A. Lincoln.

The Cornerstone Speech says all I need to know about celebrating the Confederacy. There is reason a lot celebrities from Mississippi want to distance themselves from that hideous flag.

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You think the average Mississippian fought to own a slave? The average Mississippian fought to defend the land he grew up on and lived. My state was burned to the ground and utterly destroyed by the Union army, when 90% of the soldiers who fought had zero slaves.

The self-loathing from you and other white liberals is absolutely disturbing. Africans and Muslims sold blacks into slavery, but we don't have entire university departments devoted to demonizing these two groups do we?

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Spot on.

Fun fact, Louisiana had the highest number of blacks that owned slaves.

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Wouldn’t the “anti slave” side free their own slaves BEFORE fighting a war to end slavery instead of continuing to allow slavery until after the war?

Again, why didn’t the north free their slaves?

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The South tried to secede before the amendment to abolish slavery was introduced. Thus there were bigger fish to fry at the time.

And looking back at the dates, slavery was abolished in January 1865, a few months before the end of the war. I think the whole idea that slaves were held longer in the North is overblown. Maybe you can provide some details. Most of the Northern states abolished it before the war.

(no message)

The South Will Rise Again!

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Well, if by "overblown", you mean "accurate", then you're correct.

In Kentucky, for example, slavery did not become technically illegal until December 1865. Lincoln decreed it illegal in the South in 1863, so when areas were occupied by the Union Army, those slaves were typically "freed" (although many were pressed into civilian service for the Union or enlisted).

I'm not a child - slavery was the key catalyst for secession and the conflict. But, it wasn't the only reason. And most confederate privates didn't own any slaves at all.

Slavery was already becoming a bizarre, contradictory borderline cost-ineffective "luxury good" that one also had to have to make cotton production work. It is such a strange, unique time in history, I have no idea why we want to just shove huge sections of it to the side and pretend it didn't happen or wasn't extraordinarily complex in favor of "White people bad."

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Kentucky wasn't a Northern state.

And celebrating the Confederacy doesn't exactly open up an intellectual discussion on things. Just a bunch of rednecks will drive around with Confederate flags hanging off their trucks. Otherwise you would call it Civil War Remembrance Month or something like that.