Ken Burns on "Face the Nation": it was about slavery, not "states' rights"

[question everything]

We usually turn to this program for the last half hour. Don't care what the politicians have to say.

But towards the end he interviewed Ken Burns, observing the 25th anniversary of his "The Civil War" which PBS is going to air again next month, the "ultra high definition" version.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcripts-august-23-2015-trump-christie-cruz/ (and scroll down until you reach Ken Burns)

I found this comment by him interesting:

t's no wonder that Americans have permitted themselves to be sold a bill of goods about what happened, oh, it's about states' rights, it's about nullification, it's about differences between cultural and political and economic forces that shaped the North and the South.

If you read South Carolina's Articles of Secession, the first state to secede, the birthdays of secession, the home of the original Fire Eaters, as they were called, in reaction to Abraham Lincoln, a moderates' election, they do not mention states' rights. They mention slavery. Slavery. Slavery.

And that we have to remember. It is much more complicated than that, but essentially the reason why we murdered each other -- more than 2 percent of our population, 750,000 Americans died; that's more than all the wars from the Revolution through Afghanistan combined -- was over essentially the issue of slavery.

The main American theme, I think, is freedom. It's about individual freedom in opposition or intention with collective freedom. It's about states' rights versus a strong federal government. All of these tensions have been in place since the very beginning, even before the beginning.

But we also notice that race is always there. Always there. When Thomas Jefferson says all men are created equal, he owns a couple hundred human beings and he doesn't see the contradiction or the hypocrisy and doesn't free anybody in his lifetime and sets in motion an American narrative that is bedeviled by a question of race.

And we struggle with it. We try to ignore it. We pretend, with the election of Barack Obama, that we're in some post-racial society. And of course, you know, we're not. "The Onion" magazine got it right when he was inaugurated, said "Black man given worst job in the world."

And what we have seen is a kind of reaction to this. The birther movement, of which Donald Trump is one of the authors of, is another politer way of saying the N word. It's just more sophisticated and a little bit more clever. He's "other," he's different.

What's actually "other" and different about him? It turns out it's the same old thing. It's the color of his skin.

Also

If Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, which is only two minutes, C-SPAN would cover it, but there would be standup and saying that the president came to Gettysburg to try to distract attention from his disastrous military campaign out West, meaning Tennessee. And that was partly true. That's what he was -- he was not trying to distract attention; he was trying to honor the dead. But that would have been the news story..

[arcane1]

1. It's not as if they made it a secret, however much people want to believe that.

Mississippi is especially frank:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world."

http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html

[Wounded Bear]

2. Technically, it was about the right of a state to allow slavery...

over the right of the nation to guarantee individual rights. That's how they justify it. And it's a fact, it is nothing more than a justification and rationalization for wrong doing on the part of the southern states and their leaders whose economic livelihood was based on human deprivation and slavery. I'm beginning to believe that every time the term "states' rights" is invoked, it is to cover for an evil practice of some kind.

Yeah, without slavery, there would probably not have been a Civil War.

[Raster]

4. Without the issue of slavery, there would NOT have been a Civil War.

In Civil War context, "state's rights" means the right for a slave-holding state to enter the Union, and the right for slave-holding state already in the Union to continue the abhorrent practice of owning another human being. All other discussions of state's rights are a dishonest attempt to obfuscate history.

There is also attempt to say the reasons for the Civil war were multi-cause. Perhaps in the large overview, but eventually all of those causes point back to slavery.

And speaking of attempting to rewrite history, most do not realize the "South" was not unanimous in their support of "The Southern War to Defend Slavery," in fact, far from it. As with most wars, the rich and the powerful Southerners instigated the conflict, and as with most wars it was the common man who paid the highest price.

[joeybee12]

3. People talk about fundies are trying to change textbooks...but...

This is what I recall when I was a kid (quite some time ago), being taught that slavery was only part of the reason...yup, bs even back then...slavery was the reason...without slavery, no secession...plain and simple. Revisionist history started quite some time ago.

[paleotn]

5. There's no way around it....

it's about states' rights Yes, the right of states to legalize human slavery within their borders.

It's about nullification Yes, the right of any state to nullify any federal law that might threaten their system of slave based agriculture.

It's about differences between cultural and political and economic forces that shaped the North and the South. Yes, one of those forces being the enslavement of human beings for economic profit in North America for nearly 260 years. Yes, the North profited from the slave trade primarily during the colonial era. But by 1798 slavery was abolished in most northern states, and completely abolished there by 1821. At the same time the south became further mired in a system the British and French gave up long before us because it was morally reprehensible.

But, northern industrial states virtually enslaved immigrants economically. But if an Irish factory workers told his boss to F himself and left, there were no Irish patrols roaming the country side, catching wayward Irish factory workers, savagely beating them and returning them to their industrial "masters."

But many slave owners took good care of their slaves As they did their cattle and horses, but these are human beings we're talking about, not livestock! Geeeezzz!

One wouldn't mistreat something they paid good money for Tell that to people who destroy their expensive automobiles through misuse and neglect. Or those who mistreat their livestock. These are human beings, for god's sake! Buying and selling human beings is not only un-american, it's morally indefensible. Abolitionists knew since our colonial origins. Why it's so hard for 21st century Americans to grasp, I don't know.

Slavery was a cultural norm and existed since ancient times, thus it was OK in the antebellum South. Human sacrifice was a cultural norm among our Celtic / Germanic ancestors 2000 years ago, but I don't see anyone defending that. Abolitionist sentiment has a long history in our country, dating back to the first English settlements.

Trust me, I've heard them all. They're just excuses by people desperate to venerate their ancestors no matter how much philosophical gymnastics they have to preform. It's ancestor worship at its worst. Why they can't let their ancestors be the normal, fallible, mistake ridden people they actually were, I don't know.

My uncle is sort of our family historian. When we would get on our American, cultural high horse and deride people from the Middle East, Far East etc., he would tell us that those people had the most advanced civilizations on the planet while our people were living in stone and turf hovels, running round in rags stealing each others cattle and killing their neighbors simply because they belonged to a different extended family. Sorry to break it to the ancestor worshipers, but their people were just as susceptible to the same moral failings as we are.

[UTUSN]

6. R#31 (or whatever), THANK you, Ken BURNS!1 n/t