this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
1728 points (97.4% liked)
Confidently Incorrect
4171 readers
1 users here now
When people are way too smug about their wrong answer.
Posting guidelines.
All posts in this community have come from elsewhere, it is not original content, the poster in this community is not OP. The person who posts in this community isn’t necessarily endorsing whatever the post is talking about and they are not looking to argue with you about the content in the post.
You are welcome to discuss and debate any topic but arguments are not welcome here. I consider debate/discussions to be civil; people with different opinions participating in respectful conversations. It becomes an argument as soon as someone becomes aggressive, nasty, insulting or just plain unpleasant. Report argumentative comments, then ignore them.
There is currently no rule about how recent a post needs to be because the community is about the comeback part, not the topic.
Rules:
• Be civil and remember the human.
• No trolling, insults or name calling. Swearing in general is fine, but not to insult someone.
• No bigotry of any kind, including homophobia, transphobia, sexism and racism.
• You are welcome to discuss and debate any topic but arguments are not welcome here. I consider debate/discussions to be civil; people with different opinions participating in respectful conversations. It becomes an argument as soon as someone becomes aggressive, nasty, insulting or just plain unpleasant. Report argumentative comments, then ignore them.
• Try not to get too political. A lot of these posts will involve politics, but this isn’t the place for political arguments.
• Participate in good faith - don’t be aggressive and don’t argue for arguements sake.
• Mark NSFW posts if they contain nudity.
• Satire is allowed but please start the post title with [satire] so other users can filter it out if they’d like.
Please report comments that break site or community rules to the mods. If you break the rules you’ll receive one warning before being banned from this community.
This community follows the rules of the lemmy.world instance and the lemmy.org code of conduct. I’ve summarised them here:
- Be civil, remember the human.
- No insulting or harassing other members. That includes name calling.
- Respect differences of opinion. Civil discussion/debate is fine, arguing is not. Criticise ideas, not people.
- Keep unrequested/unstructured critique to a minimum.
- Remember we have all chosen to be here voluntarily. Respect the spent time and effort people have spent creating posts in order to share something they find amusing with you.
- Swearing in general is fine, swearing to insult another commenter isn’t.
- No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia or any other type of bigotry.
- No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So, this annoys me to no end, because the first dude is technically right, Lincoln came in to office with no intention to outlaw slavery, although he did want to keep it confined to the states it was already legal in. And what he’s actually wrong about is that Lincoln made it about slavery to get the support of the northerners - he actually made sure that it northerners believed it was about “keeping the union together.” Remember the union still had the slave states of Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri. He wanted to keep these states in the union.
Lincoln (through Seward) stressed the anti-slavery stuff to Europeans, many of whom wanted to intervene on the side of the confederacy because that was where they got their cotton. The industrial north also was a threat to industrial Europe, but the agrarian south was a source of raw materials. But by stressing the anti-slavery stuff in Europe (and then of course the emancipation proclamation which didn’t actually outlaw slavery in the border states) he ensured Europe could not intervene on behalf of the confederacy since it would be so unpopular. So, in the states it was about the union, abroad it was about slavery.
But anyway, he’s right on a technicality that, for Lincoln, it was not really about slavery. But this does not mean the war itself was not about slavery. His conclusion rests on the assumption that in a war, two sides must be diametrically opposed to one another, so if Lincoln and the north were not fighting against slavery, therefore the south could not be fighting for slavery.
But as others have pointed out, the south explicitly says they are fighting to preserve the institution of slavery. They are worried about waning political power also - if Lincoln stopped the spread of slavery across the continent as he desired, the growth of free states would mean congress would not be as evenly split between slave and free states, opening up the possibility of legislating an end to slavery.
So the war was about slavery, and would not have occurred without slavery. Often we point to the Battle of Sumter as the beginning of the civil war, but many historians also point out the popular civil war could instead be said to begin in 1859 in Harper’s Ferry, or with Bleeding Kansas and the Pottawotamie Massacre, or maybe the caning of Charles sumner or the murder of Elijah Lovejoy, or any of the political battles that arose when the US began to expand west and the question arose “what about slavery.” All of these events are directly about slavery and it would be difficult to argue otherwise.
And also, just as a last thing “many southern generals didn’t care about slavery.” I have no idea how true that is and it doesn’t matter, because the war was not fought because of southern generals but because of politicians, southern landowners, and an economy resting on the subjugation of Black people, and that’s why they were fighting.
That isn't "technically correct". His statement said the Civil War. Not Lincoln. If you want to go and support the racial ramblings of a moron on Twitter, it would help to technically correct yourself.
His entire train of thought is based on the idea that “Lincoln didn’t oppose slavery” which is “technically correct.” Except it leaves out all historical analysis which allows him to come to the fallacious conclusion that “the civil war wasn’t about slavery.”
Wars aren't one person. Even the President.
Yes, this was literally my entire point. Did you miss this?
Edit: if you need it spelled out, I am implying that this is a fallacious assumption
Edit 2: to spell it out further, I am implying this is a fallacious assumption based in part on the reason you just laid out
Then you need you access your writing capabilities. Your initial response was he was "technically correct". He is not technically correct. He's technically stretching the truth to match click bait on a garbage platform and spew anti racism rhetoric.
Lincoln was not the only person fighting the Civil War. There were hundreds of thousands. You disrespect every soldier that died and for their causes by reducing it to two people making choices.
I took History of the United States. As an undergrad. With an emphasis on the time period. Slavery was very much part of the landscape for every single American. It is utterly inept to even try and justify it otherwise.
Most people who read my original comment seemed to have no issues with it. You however should work on your reading comprehension if you came away from it thinking that it’s justifying slavery.
Did Lincoln want to outlaw slavery? Maybe we can begin there.
I straight up don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about in the rest of this comment. Or rather, I don’t know how it’s responding in any way to my original comment.
Then take a more comprehensive English course and don't respond until you do.
do you have brain damage?
Are you asking for advice if you do? We still love you. You be you boo.
I’m honestly concerned for your health. You seem to lack the ability to comprehend basic written English, and nearly all of your comments are rife with word salad completely unrelated to anything I’ve written. You either have some sort of brain damage, or you’ve really misjudged your own intelligence, reading comprehension, and ability to communicate using the written word
I would be concerned with your own. But don't worry too much about mine. You aren't smart enough to understand your mistakes or the person you are dealing with. Seriously, look into therapy. Because you cannot see what everyone else does.
Hey! Why don’t you go stick your dick in a meat grinder to ensure your genes don’t continue to pollute the human race!
The sad thing is you and I agree and have agreed this whole time, but because of your dumbass inability to admit you misunderstood me we’re here now. You’re a waste of space and every resource that has ever gone to sustaining your life, all the food and water and energy, it’s all been wasted. Truly sad to imagine. You are a leech upon this earth.