Mark Davis
Aug 23, 2017 · 1 min read

Mostly agree, but one sentence that caught my eye was : “I even heard that the Northern, non-slave-holding states were just as racist and oppressive as the South (maybe even more so).” In fact, the North was VERY racist. The notion that the war was about a *moral* objection to slavery is a post-war invention.

If you want to understand the North’s anti-slavery stance, perhaps a useful analogy is to think about people who are most opposed to Mexican migrant workers today. Would you say they are primarily motivated by a moral opposition to explotation of a disadvantaged class? Offended at their OSHA-non-compliant working conditions? Offended they don’t get overtime and work for sub-poverty wages? No, that is not the primary concern you would hear from a typical Arizona minuteman activist. People are concerned about the effect on *themselves*, nothing more. So it was with the objection to slavery in the North before the war. The altruistic moral objection was a tiny, tiny fringe position at that time.

I agree that the cause of the Confederacy should be condemned. But to me it is sobering to dig a little deeper and realize how pervasive racism was everywhere. That fact is perturbing and in a sense disappointing, but it seems more educational than pretending all the good was in one place, and all the evil in another.

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