David Knight
First Sergeant
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2012
- Location
- Pontefract, Yorkshire.
I might be re treading a well worn path but I am really confused about what the south was fighting for?
There seem in the simplistic world to be two reasons.
1. States Rights
2. Slavery to be continued and expanded into the new states of the growing USA.
I can see why some would want to fight for what they see as the rights of the individual State against the Federal Government but why if this means the retention of something so intolerable as slavery that had been rejected by all the countries of Europe from where the vast majority of the US population of the political classes of both North and South had emigrated from some time in the previous 250 years?
In many conflicts and political arguments the doctrine of my enemies, enemy is my friend is at work but why is Slavery the fundamental State Right that was sacred and beyond question. Was the South a bit Feudal in character where the white population owed a duty (real or perceived) to the local landowner and would therefore perform some kind of military service out of a sense of compulsion/duty rather than love for the cause?
I hope to be enlightened by the thoughts of those who have open minds.
There seem in the simplistic world to be two reasons.
1. States Rights
2. Slavery to be continued and expanded into the new states of the growing USA.
I can see why some would want to fight for what they see as the rights of the individual State against the Federal Government but why if this means the retention of something so intolerable as slavery that had been rejected by all the countries of Europe from where the vast majority of the US population of the political classes of both North and South had emigrated from some time in the previous 250 years?
In many conflicts and political arguments the doctrine of my enemies, enemy is my friend is at work but why is Slavery the fundamental State Right that was sacred and beyond question. Was the South a bit Feudal in character where the white population owed a duty (real or perceived) to the local landowner and would therefore perform some kind of military service out of a sense of compulsion/duty rather than love for the cause?
I hope to be enlightened by the thoughts of those who have open minds.
Bringing the