American racism was pervasive and powerful

[struggle4progress]

BY RICHARD COHEN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, July 13, 2015, 8:00 PM

Georgia seceded from the Union in January 1861, and spelled out the reasons with a statement that’s 3,318 words long, including 35 references to “slave” and “slavery.” Slavery is the reason Georgia left to join the Confederate States of America — and the Georgians of that era made no bones about it. The statement is refreshingly — and astonishingly — free of euphemisms such as “states’ rights.” It is devoted to the purported right of white people to own black people. It retains the power to shock.

I read the document because of what Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) said about the Confederate battle flag. “When you’re putting a flag on someone’s grave, to me, I think it’s a little different than being racist,” he said. He added that “the majority of people that actually died in the Civil War on the Confederate side did not own slaves. These were people that were fighting for their states. I don’t think they had even any thoughts about slavery.”

Maybe so. But I don’t think the average German soldier in World War II gave much thought to Jews. Yet he was fighting for a regime that was determined to kill every last Jew anywhere in the world. What the average soldier thought or felt is immaterial. It is what he was willing to do that mattered ...

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/richard-cohen-confederate-flag-true-meaning-article-1.2290899

[Igel]

1. Have you read it?

It's strange. Cohen's right. Yet Cohen's wrong, if you make even a token good-will effort to follow the reasoning that the declaration itself seems to follow instead of reading into what we assume they must have meant.

Yeah, the argument's all about slavery. And how it's abolition is part of the intent of the North to subvert and control the South, because the North is dependent upon, controls, and enjoys the benefit of the federal government in ways that the South doesn't and doesn't need to but the North finds intolerable. With anti-slavery sentiment being but a ruse to control the South and destroy the South.

" In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects. Theses interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency. The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest."

As I said, very strange.