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There was more to the Civil War than just slavery...

The Rock

Slavery was a big issue but even Lincoln said he would drop it if that would let the Union stay together. He knew it was on its way out regardless. The world was changing.

Southern democrat copperheads weren't just a fringe group either. They comprised a large percentage of the democrat party that spread across the geographic majority of our nation during that era.

And as it was back then, blinded by deception is still the rule among democrats of today.

The civil war is part of our history. Taking down monuments etc because they are from the south is erasing our history. Maybe we should take down the Washington monument as well. After all he owned slaves.

I think by studying our history. We can look back and see how far we have come as a nation.

One last piece of history for you MikeV. The North wanted Lee to command there army in the worst way. He was the best General we had in this country. He was torn between serving the Union and the confederacy where he was from. Now after 8 years of Obama and our steps backwards in race relations his statue isn't good enough.

And hey - HILLARY LOST AND TRUMP GOT HIS PICK FOR SCOTUS - GET OVER IT!!!

That said, the removal of the monuments is a travesty and it sends us down a slippery slope. I think not only does it send a terrible precedent, there are frankly bigger fish to fry in this town.

I'd love to see what happens when someone suggests they change the name of the LSU Tigers (named for a Confederate regiment)! Good luck with that!!

Slavery was the scapegoat.

Edit: "In my opinion..."

The Rock

Native Americans enslaved each other and owned black slaves as well once that was established. The first owner to legally be awarded lifetime servitude of a slave in America was a former indentured servant from Angola that had won his freedom. There were thousands of black slave owners in America. None of this excuses any part of slavery but the big picture is that slavery is something that every race has been on both sides of. If we are going to tear down every flag or symbol of a group or country that has slavery as part of its history, we have our work cut out for us.

There's no denying the Civil War was a terrible war pitting brother against brother. Most fought for a cause they truly didn't understand.

Unfortunately, like the Swastika before the Nazi's adopted it, the Confederate Flag has been used by fringe groups to represent their cause which usually were evil and pathetic groups. Since southern culture didn't stand up and fight these groups it destroyed any chance for these symbols to be taken for anything else but evil.

Branding is everything and certain Civil War symbols are seen as evil.

As far as the Civil War is concerned - it was ALL about slavery. Since slavery powered the southern economy and the north was less reliant on producing goods - it was about fiscal and social issues that slavery brought. There were owners on all sides but one side decided that it needed to end.

I've been to almost every major civil war site and many of the smaller ones. I wish the symbols caused less controversies and could be remembered.

These symbols belong at the historic sites but the Confederate flag should never be flown outside these venues.

In an interesting side note, on the 1860 census, my g-g-great grandfather was listed as one of the largest slave owners in Marshall County Mississippi while he himself was listed on the "non-white" roll in that census.

Power only given by a state to be governed to gain certain federal benefits (protections), as in defense of borders from foreign invaders.

And just how was the confederacy any different than the colonial Patriots?

I believe that the desire to remove these statues is rooted in emotion. Not facts. Not actual history. Instead, a censored, revisionist history that's simpler and more comfortable. Similar to the omission of uncomfortable facts in the research of Ben Affleck's family tree.

I think the statues should remain. They should be visited by students who can study and reflect on the bad and good, the complexities of individuals, "states" and motivations, human suffering, commitment to causes, sacrifices, subjugation and whether the end justifies the means.

But that would require effort and be uncomfortable for all and people would be forced to think. It's much simpler and easier to remove complex issues from view and polish a sanitized narrative.

link is to little ones for home worship

This was not a war to end slavery. Logic makes this case quite plainly. Were it so, the emancipation measures of late '62 and '63 would have been implemented in the winter of 1861. Even then, the language was written to limit emancipation to states in rebellion against the union. Frankly, Lincoln leveraged the continuation of slavery in favor of maintaining the union. And ultimately, Lincoln did not save the union, he, under the weight of incalculable misery, transfigured it to Hamilton's vision of centrally controlled government.

The notion of country was not the same as it is understood this day. When explaining why, after agonizing over his decision, Lee resolved to fight for the South, he said he could not live with himself if he drew his sword against his country, Virginia.

Jubal Early, the progenitor of the Lost Cause movement, was a staunch unionist. He held that view and actually cast votes in VA's secession convention to remain in the union. Only when Lincoln called for raising 70,000 troops did he change his mind.

No, I believe the revisionism belongs to the victor, the body and its progeny, who wishes to contrive a higher purpose for its bloody hands than to preserve geography.

SLAVERY: FORBIDDEN BY SCRIPTURE, A CONCESSION TO SHARIA LAW

Bryan Fisher

It is incumbent upon our president that he be a man who uses the resources at his disposal to resist, reject and prevent the implementation of Sharia law anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances in the United States.

Sharia law is already making encroachments in American culture in large ways and small, whether it’s Target cashiers getting a pass for refusing to serve customers who want to buy bacon, or Christians being arrested for handing out free copies of the gospel of John to Muslims on a public sidewalk.

But making concessions to Sharia law over against the moral code of the Judeo-Christian tradition is not something brand new for America. We started doing it in 1619 when we began to tolerate the slave trade, as the first shipment of 30 African slaves arrived on the shores of Virginia.

By the way, the first legally recognized slave in America, John Casor, was actually the property of a black man, a colonist by the name of Anthony Johnson. A Northampton County court ruled in 1654 that Casor was “owned” by Johnson, and was his property for life. There were many black slaveholders in the South at the outbreak of the Civil War, and many of them took up arms against the North.

Here’s how Thomas Sowell puts it: “[T]here were thousands of … blacks in the antebellum south who were commercial slave owners, just like their white counterparts. An estimated one-third of the ‘free persons of color’ in New Orleans were slaveowners and thousands of these slave owners volunteered to fight for the Confederacy…”

The slaves who were brought here in chains in 1619 were Africans who had been kidnapped by other Africans and sold to slave traders who in turn brought them to America. The kidnappers, the ones who went into the interior of Africa to capture their fellow Africans to sell them into bondage, were predominantly Muslims.

In fact, according to Thomas Sowell, a million or more Europeans were enslaved by Muslim pirates from North Africa from 1500-1800, and whites were sold at slave auctions in Egypt until at least the year 1885. Muslims still openly practice slavery today in places like Mauritania, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

Muhammad himself practiced slavery, and directed his followers to do the same. Since Muhammad is the ultimate role model for Muslims, and Muslims believe that everything he did will be worthy of imitation until the end of time, slavery will always have moral approval in Islam.

Estimates are that over 17 million slaves were transported out of Africa by Islamic slave traders, and a staggering 85 million are believed to have died en route. About 645,000 of those wound up in what became the United States.

Quoting Sowell: “…the region of West Africa…was one of the great slave-trading regions of the continent – before, during, and after the white man arrived. It was Africans who enslaved their fellow Africans, selling some of these slaves to Europeans or to Arabs and keeping others for themselves. Even at the peak of the Atlantic slave trade, Africans retained more slaves for themselves than they sent to the Western Hemisphere…Arabs were the leading slave raiders in East Africa, ranging over an area larger than all of Europe.” (Emphasis mine.)

Now, in contrast to Islam and Sharia, the Judeo-Christian tradition from day one has been adamantly opposed to the slave trade.

The civil code of ancient Israel did provide, as America did, for indentured servitude, which was voluntary and had statutory limits after which emancipation was required. As many as two-thirds of the English settlers who came to America in the 17th century came as indentured servants.

Ancient Israel also allowed prisoners of war to be held as slaves, just as the United States did with German POWs in WWII. Planeloads of German POWs were brought to the South and worked in the fields until the end of the war. We couldn’t send them home during the war, where they would take up arms again and kill us, and we didn’t want to execute them. Servitude was the only compassionate alternative. And it was the same in ancient Israel.

But Moses flatly prohibited the slave trade under penalty of death. “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death” (Exodus 21:16). In other words, if a strictly biblical code had been followed in 1619, the slave trader who brought that ship to Virginia would have been arrested the moment he landed, prosecuted and hung by the neck until dead. The slaves on board would have been returned to their families and their homelands, and slavery would never have gained a foothold in the United States.

But sadly, we made our first concession to Sharia law in 1619 instead of being guided by the wisdom of Scripture, and we have paid a terrible price for it. Slavery became our first national sin, as abortion is today.

The slave trade is flatly prohibited in the New Testament as well. Paul speaks in 1 Timothy of the proper role of the law, and indicates that the law “is not laid down for the just,” who will not need the external coercion of the law to make responsible social choices. Their internal value system will guide their conduct in culture-affirming directions.

So the law is “for the lawless and disobedient…for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, (and) perjurers…” (1 Timothy 1:9-10, ESV).

The word translated “enslavers” (andropodistes) literally means a “man who brings others to his feet.” The lexicons define the word this way: “a slave dealer, kidnapper, man-stealer, one who unjustly reduces free men to slavery, or steals slaves of others and sells them.”

So if the early colonists had followed either the Old or New Testaments, the slave trade would have been treated as criminal behavior from the very beginning, and America never would have been plagued with all the myriad evils that slavery and racism have brought to our land.

As Sowell has pointed out, the real question is not what created slavery but what ended it. And it was evangelical, Tea Party-types who brought this horrific and barbaric practice to an end.

Sowell: “While slavery was common to all civilizations, as well as to peoples considered uncivilized, only one civilization developed a moral revulsion against it, very late in its history…not even the leading moralists in other civilizations rejected slavery at all….Moreover, within Western civilization, the principal impetus for the abolition of slavery came first from very conservative religious activists – people who would today be called ‘the religious right.’…this story is not ‘politically correct’ in today’s terms. Hence it is ignored, as if it never happened.” (Emphasis mine.)

Bottom line: If the Scriptures had been followed instead of Sharia law, there would have been no slavery in America, no Civil War, and no racial unrest. As always, the Bible was the solution, not the problem. Let’s stop Sharia in its tracks everywhere before we make another disastrous concession to this dark and dangerous religion.

"We are in civil war. In such cases there always is a main question; but in this case that question is a perplexing compound -- Union and Slavery. It thus becomes a question not of two sides merely, but of at least four sides, even among those who are for the Union, saying nothing of those who are against it."

Matt

MikeV you're a dumbass. It really shows with your statement. What's next? You want to plow under all the Confederate grave markers? You'll have to go thru me first to do it. Confederate Monuments are part of America's history. Believe it. GET OVER IT.

Good grief.......someone call the grammar police......

Oh, thank God!!!!

Sit Down And Shut Up!!!

-No, in my view and the view of many, we all lost that war. What you fail to realize is that "The Lost Cause" observance is less about nostalgia and much more about a philosophy of governance, namely, a much more localized and personally sovereign construct.

I love to study the Civil War because the hand of God is all over it and the conflict revealed men of amazing character. Most curious, however, the war is a study in profound irony. The most poignant example of stated irony is that martial force from Washington freed a singular race of man at the cost of enslaving an entire nation.

Matt

I would submit that freeing a singular race is worth any cost. I'm pretty sure you would agree if you were one of the singular slaves.

Having said that....I'm against removing the monuments. They are history...it doesn't matter whether you like the history.

No, that sound is patriot "stump breaking freeglee" !