What Georgia saw was it's economic security was slavery. That's what most of document is about.
Again, this is one state out of 11, and the issue of slavery was intertwined with their agrarian system, that is not being denied, it is simply being identified for what it was, part of the list of grievances of the entire Confederacy. Leave us not forget, slavery was codified as federal law by the U.S. government, so by this standard the entire American U.S. Constitution should have been reset, something I wouldn't mind doing today, albeit for a number of different reasons.
I would be inclined to believe you if Virginia had said something like "Tyrannical designs of President Lincoln to subjugate free Americans." But no, Virginia didn't like that Lincoln was going after fellow slave states. I highly doubt that Virginia would have lifted cared if some Southern fire-eater was elected President and fought a war to keep seceding Northern states in the union.
In other words, you don't care what Virginia had to say on the subject because you have an anachronistic desire to see the Virginia government jump through a bunch of linguistic hoops to suit your fancies. I know black separatists from New York City who think more logically on this subject than you do.
"self-righteous historical revisionists". I love history and want to become a history teacher in the near future. So I approached this issue as I would any other, I did my research, read primary documents, and came to a conclusion based on the evidence. And the evidence points to the argument that the driving force behind secession was the preservation of slavery.
This explains everything, you've taken the entire Federal Government's curriculum as gospel and want to serve it as a priest. Have fun brain-washing the next generation, you're yet another reason why my children aren't setting foot anywhere near a public school.
I'm sorry for what your family went through. I don't see what this has to do with why the southern states seceded.
You told me your family history in order to explain your position, I returned the favor as a courtesy. And kindly don't condescend to me by telling me you're sorry what my family went through, if you truly were, you'd re-evaluate the path your on and the government you are looking to serve. People who think the way that you do were the reason why many of my ancestors died horrible deaths just after escaping being starved to death by the British Crown and Parliament. Freedom is something that somebody else dies for, it was true in Lincoln's war just as much as it was in Bush's.
Also, how do you know what your ancestors thought about banking interests and railroad companies? My pro-union ancestors, to my knowledge, didn't write about their experiences.
My father's side of the family spent several generations as coal miners and were big in the unions that sprung up in the latter half of the 19th century, and it's pretty easy to peace together what was going on from connecting stories my grandfather told me (which were told successively for several generations) with recorded history. Read up on the Molly Maguires and the Pennsylvania Coal Fields, particularly regarding Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company president Franklin B. Gowan (the original robberbaron of Schuylkill County and also a politician, at least until he was ousted by J.P. Morgan). My family was not directly implicated with the Maguires, but they were definitely working the same mines and subjecting to the same terrible conditions that lead one of an early grave at slave wages.
The Pennsylvania Railroad companies, many of which were indistinguishable from the Coal Companies at the time, were heavily involved in Abraham Lincoln's nomination and subsequent election in 1860. This is not something under dispute, nor is the reasons behind why so many people in the Pennsylvania Coal Fields were subjected to brutal conditions in order to fatten petty tyrants like the ones who made Lincoln president, so-called "industrialists" who bragged about how they were going to game the entire political system, pillage the southern states and later use the Union Army as a termination squad for resistant Sioux, Cherokee and Apache peoples who didn't want railroads crossing through their territory. I should probably also mention that one of ancestors on my mother's side took a Lakota-Sioux wife soon after the Civil War, so technically both sides of my family have their reasons for saying "to hell with the union".
I didn't build my ideas of the civil war off of any textbook. For the record, I was home-schooled during elementary schooled and was exposed to a lot of neo-Confederate propaganda in middle school by at least one teacher and several students.
That's fine, I spent 12 years Pennsylvania and Maryland public schools, and everything you've said is all but a verbatim rehash of what they tried to force into my head. Granted, I did believe a lot of this stuff until after I graduated college and began digging into my family's history and also reading selected works by Thomas DiLorenzo and a few others.
I've known black people who went to segregated schools, including one pastor who hates Obama. He wouldn't share your views on civil rights though.
If this is some attempt at playing at my emotions, you're wasting your time. I've known too many products of integrated schools in Philadelphia and Baltimore to be moved by an exception to the rule. Besides, statistical data trumps our respective anecdotal experiences, and the fruits of the Civil Rights movement are best explained through Obama's ridiculously high approval ratings among black voters, and also how said people treat each other on a daily basis from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. The biggest city in my state can't seem to go a single day without some poor kid or other bystander getting shot by a Crip or Blood who wants respect.
Maybe your pastor buddy has something to say about all the out-of-wedlock babies that started popping up after busing went into effect? Just a thought.
