Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
Neil;
In my trips around the world, both with the military and on business I am astounded by how DIFFERENT we all are.
Sure we all want the same as far as money/shelter etc. thats the human condition. however these other cultures see the world in a very different way then "we" do. And I say "we" as we are , sadly, now a multicultural country.
As to those who want to set themselves higher, I will avoid the easy "whats wrong with ambition" and instead opt for all people in all places with RARE exception consider themselves better or special in some way. sadly the myth of we are all the same is right up there with "violence does not solve anything" as wishful thinking.
There is something to what you say concerning cultural differences, to a degree. As to your observations on on some wishing to set themselves higher or claiming how some feel they are better than others because of those differences, it reminded me of something I had read a long time ago.
"...I am a Jew.
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
demensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means,
warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer,
as a Christian is? If you pr ick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
shall we not die?" (III, i, 58-66).
It is my own opinion, Ray, and my own experience, that when one people emphasize another people's cultural or religious or anything different out of all proportion to the elemental fact that they are fellow human beings, this is when hate, war and atrocities begin.
Having differences is no problem in itself, it is when you seem to state, that when we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by them, we forget that we are all members of the human race.
Again, in my own view, substitute the word 'Jew' in the above few lines and you find a commonality with every other race, religion, culture, nationality, sex, etc., on the planet.
Sincerely,
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
I agree compleatly to the above, my point is simply this is the way it is, and was, in most of the world. It is not pretty. but it is the natural state of man.
Sure we have similarities, but the differences is what we use to define ourselves, and therin lies the problem
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
It's quite simple really. Our national anthem would be 'God Save The Queen'. Without servants, to performed the labor, George Washington wouldn't have had time to become General Washington, he would have been busy raising food. If Thomas Jefferson hadn't had slaves, it's doubtful that he would have had time to write the Declaration of Independence(with the help of Adams, Franklin, livingston, and Sherman, of course). France might still own Louisanna.... The U.S. might be referred to as Southern Canada. New Englanders wouldn't have gotten rich with the Triangle Trade, the South would still be clearing swamps to farm. The slave, as a slave, has a much greater place in American History than is allotted him. And Fredrick Douglas would have been all white, not half.
Dear Jenna,
I see your point, and its an important one. In Edmund Morgan's "American Slavery, American Freedom," about colonial Virginia, he argues that the mostly British indentured servants of the 17th century, created an unstable society, as they formed a propertyless, volatile group, mobile, armed and discontented, constantly replenished by fresh cohorts of laborers from the British Isles. African slaves were a permanently confined class, their legal inferiority and eternal exclusion marked by the color of their skin, stablized colonial society, united all whites to control the black population, reassuring both the white planter and white yeoman farmer that, while they might have differencies, they were in the same racial boat.
Without black slavery, colonial slaveowning areas would have developed more radical, "leftist" and democratic societies, or at least experienced much more social turmoil.
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