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| Joined: | Wed Jun 13th, 2007 |
| Location: | North Carolina USA |
| Posts: | 420 |
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But I'm not being flippant here.
The definition of a slave, according to Websters Unabridged Dictionary, is "...a human being who is owned and wholly subject to the will of another, as by capture, purchase or birth."
Digest every word of that definition. Having said that, it is totally inconceivable to me, whether I live in the 21st century or in the 19th century, whether I'm black or white, that any human being, much less antebellum African Americans, would find happiness in that particular condition and "love" their masters. It's bondage, clear and simple.
Liberty, if the slaves loved truly their masters, then there should have been no need for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. How do you explain the nearly 100,000 blacks who sought freedom via the Underground Railroad? Why did 180,000 blacks — many of them former slaves themselves — fight for the Union to secure the freedom of their brothers in bondage? "Love," indeed. Are you not paying attention to your American history, or are you just revising it?
As for Sherman, you must understand that his march was a military expedition. His was an army of invasion, not an army of liberation, and thus was not prepared to accept and care for huge numbers of refugees. This is especially true while deep in Confederate territory when he could expect to be engaged in combat at any moment. What do you do with noncombatants then? Perhaps another view of Sherman is that his march across Georgia and into the Carolinas may have actually shortened the war, thus ultimately saving lives.
States' rights? What states' right are you referring to? It must be the one to maintain slavery and export it to the territories. One of the best single-sentence descriptions I've seen to explain the Civil War comes from an editor of one of the monthly Civil War publications you can find on any newstand. He noted that "the Civil War was about secession, and secession was about slavery." I don't think it gets any more succinct than that.