Prickly City by Scott Stantis for February 12, 2009

Scott Stantis: one of like 57 white men in Alabama who think of Abraham Lincoln as one of the greatest Americans ever.

I live in Alabama, and I know more than 57 white men who think that. Remember that Abe was a Republican and the south was 100% democrat in those days (and still is for local elections). My county voted 70% for McCain and has all democrat county officials. I’ve lived in the northeast and race relations are far better here than there. I live in rural Alabama and have several black neighbors. My granddaughter is dating a nice guy who is half black. And no one in her high school thinks anything is wrong with it. Get your facts straight about the new south.

I live in the “new south” (whatever the heck that means.) Jeff Davis County, Georgia to be exact.

The dog is and remains easily confused.

What dog?

  What remains?  

I suspect that Stantis intended the gag to be just a mild poke at 86-year-old Bea Arther. (Charlie: never heard of “Maude” or “The Golden Girls”?)

However, the result is a lame joke that implies a strange evaluation of Lincoln. But whose?

As for the “New South”, there’s certainly been great progress, but I was once stunned by the intelligent, educated Alabama white woman who told me the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. To give her the benefit of the doubt I went to the history books and read several decades of speeches by Southern politicians.

That showed me it was always about slavery and nothing but, all the way from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution to South Carolina’s first attempt at secession in the 1830s to the final break because of Lincoln’s election. Yet I gather that the non-slavery lie is still widely taught in Southern schools.

Slavery was evil, whether practiced by the South or tolerated by the North, and there’s no making excuses for it. The South should admit it and move on.

My understanding has always been that to the South, it was all about State’s Rights. The South disliked the industrialized North, wanted to cling to their agricultural ways, and did not want Northerners telling them how they should live. It was difficult to get the Southern states to agree to become part of the United States of America. They did not believe in a centralized government, etc. The slavery issue was used by the North when adding states to the Union as Free or Slave. The more populous states were desired to be free so that the industrial north could control congress. The North made it about slavery, and if you study the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln only freed the slaves in “states that are currently in rebellion against the United States”. He did NOT free the slaves in my state, Maryland, nor in Kentucky, as he did not want those states to secede. I could go on, but won’t. Happy Linbcoln’s Birthday! One of, if not THE, greatest President ever.

I realize the following has nothing to do with the cartoon, but the subject has come up, which should be discussed. South Carolina considered secession from the Union several times before 1861. What led them to be the first to seceed was the election of Lincoln in 1860. The possibility of ending slavery was the tipping point. Ending slavery meant the loss of assets (slaves), a major economic threat, as the southern economy was largly labor intensive. The south was in great debt to northern banks. Succession solved several problems. They could retain ownership of their assets and avoid their debt, as a new country rendered the debt uncollectable. What puzzles me is the fact that only 10 percent of southern production depended on slave labor. Why did the remaining rural economy, small farmers, place such value on identifying with a cause that did not affect them?

ANandy-They didn’t identify with that cause! They believed in “My state first”. As I previously stated, they supported State’s Rights, not slavery. Robert E. Lee, when asked to be commanding general of the Union forces, stated that he could never take up arms against his beloved Virginia. He did not say anything about slavery. That is just one example.

Good comments, #1 and ANandy.

First to #1: You accurately reflect the traditional Southern line. But the ONLY State Right that concerned them was the alleged “right” to own slaves; everything else was a smoke screen to hide the gross immorality of the whole institution. Not to mention that there can be no such thing as a “right” to violate rights. Not wanting the North to tell them how to live? That meant they didn’t want to be told not to have slaves. Not wanting a centralized government? That meant a government that could eventually abolish slavery. And so forth. Like I said earlier, it was always ONLY about slavery.

For ANandy: You raise an excellent question about why the non-slave Southerners fought to the death for slavery. A young history professor named Eric Daniels provided the answer in a lecture I attended a few years ago. The South fought so bitterly for the psychological reason that even the po’est, most ignorant, white-trash hard-scrabble red-neck hillbilly could dream of someday owning a slave to order around, to whip at will, maybe a nice yellow house-girl to rape and bear more slaves as if humans are breeding animals, giving him more humans he can feel superior to.

But humans have human rights. Jefferson, for all the faults of a man of his time and region, knew that and put it into the Declaration, and that is the essence of America which we are still moving toward, however haltingly.

I love good dialogue, and we have it here. You are absolutly correct, #1, that the state’s rights argument was at the foundation of the decision to seceed. To that extent, I beleive the south was correct, not that their motives were pure. The south was a hotbed of hotheads, a culture that remains to some extent. I, most of all, am glad the union was preserved and I’m glad equal rights of all citizens were affirmed. I maintain though, the states are sovereign to decide those issues not espressly given the Federal Government.

ANandy-thank you. It is good that we can have stimulating dialogue without it deteriorating into viatribe. I just want to make clear that although my family has been in “America” since prior to the Revolutionary War, I am a first-generation Marylander. My family has been in Johnstown, PA since @ 1763. My great-great grandfather (I believe that is correct)on my father’s side fought for the Union, was wounded at Antietam, recovered here in Frederick, and was back in the Army in time to fight again at Gettysburg. Obviously, he survived the Civil War, or I wouldn’t be here! Every generation of my family has served this country since the Revolutionary War, including myself. I just enjoy studying the Civil War, but I really know more about Vietnam (Boy, there’s another subject, huh?) God Bless all, 1RF

Um, actually, I believe the State’s Right which precipitated the Civil War was the right to export cotton to England without export duties; the Northern states wanted to be able to purchase all of the cotton at below-market prices. England was actually considering entering the war on the Confederate side, until the Emancipation Proclamation; they were unable to fight on the (explicit) side of slavery.

The War of Northern Aggression (there was nothing civil about the conflict) was, as is usually the case, about MONEY. Slavery was one component of the equation. Read the Northern papers of the time. Slavery did not become an issue in the north until 2 years into the war, at which time it was used to convince the people of the Union that the war was a holy cause to eliminate slavery. Up to that point, the Union was losing the war, and public support of the “War to Preserve the Union” was fading quickly.

In 1860 plantation slavery, which formed the bulk of the slavery economy, was already doomed for economic reasons. It could not have lasted more than a generation. The price of a slave suitable for field work was rapidly spiraling upwards, to the point that it was already cheaper to hire free men part time than to support slaves full time. The tidal wave of European immigrants, primarily from farming backgrounds, who were willing to work for near starvation wages, was just starting. Add in the technological advances in agriculture, that permitted one man to do the work of dozens, and the economic justifications for owning slaves would have disappeared in a decade.

Pity they didn’t have nukes back then, it would have put everything into perspective.

I’m sorry to have missed yesterdays discussion. You folk are great. I am convinced the causes of the Civil War, or however you choose to label it, was largely economic, as several states came near secession for the same reason several times years before. The South, as it was, was doomed. Racist attitudes were not confined to the South, as the North had riots before and during the Civil War. Actually I believe the precipitant was the threat from cheaper labor, but the rioters used race as an excuse. We saw it in the anti-Irish, etc attitudes. I hope someone is still out there.

ANandy-I’m still out here. I think you really “bottom-lined” it with your economic comment. As far as racist attitudes go, I have been AMAZED by the amount of racism in the North! Being from Maryland, I figured all my PA cousins would not be racist. WRONG! They were FAR worse than anything I have ever been exposed to, and I grew up just outside DC. My Dad took us to National Airport the night MLK was assassinated, just to watch the riots across the Potomac River in DC. My feeling has always been (and I’m white, although that shouldn’t matter) that I judge people by the following: you are either an a-hole or not. At that point, race, creed, etc. goes out the window!

No.1: Thank you for serving our country. My family lived on the other side, having lived on a plantation on the NC coast. After the CW they migrated west. My grandfather ended moving our family to the West Coast. I can’t say I really experienced any racism, never attended segregated shcools, etc. My great-grandmother’s family was massacred in GA; two siblings survived. I greatly admire my grandfather who had the sense to find opportunity rather than hang around and complain about conditions beyond his control. Both my father and mother earned undergraduate degrees, the first in their families. That was before the plague of affirmative action.

God bless us every one.