Reply #57: The specific state's right in question was slavery. [View All]

[IrateCitizen]

Your presentation of this argument, whether you realize it or not, reeks of the Eurocentrism (meaning from the perspective of White Europeans, or their descendants) that permeates what is known as the "official" version of US history.

I would bet that if you were to go back in time and ask any person who was a slave what they thought of the institution of slavery, they would describe it as just as inhumane and barbaric as the Nazi's attitude toward the Jews. Especially if you had talked to a slave who escaped and was caught, and may have had his foot hacked off as a punishment. Or the woman slave who worked in the house and was repeatedly raped by her white "master". Or the child who was ripped away from his parents at a young age because he was sold off to another "master".

Try reading some of the accounts of slavery as told from those who were actually slaves. Also read some of the political debates of the time immediately prior to the Civil War. Then try and tell me that the specific state's right at the heart of the Civil War was NOT slavery, and that slavery was a completely inhumane and barbaric institution. Any attempts to say otherwise are not realistic -- rather they are the rationalizations of those who wish to diminish the significant transgressions of our ancestors, and in doing so, to ignore their lingering effects today.