"Yet, if God wills that [the war] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword..."
Replies
"... as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said -- 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" [chills]
jul 13, 2025, 3:52 am • 57 4 • view
I look back at the time I was taught in school that the “Civil War wasn’t about slavery it was about economics” and just marvel. To make that statement a teacher has to willfully ignore the greatest speech in American history.
jul 13, 2025, 4:03 am • 115 4 • view
Every time someone says that sort of crap my only reaction is “economics of WHAT?!” “States rights TO DO WHAT?!”
jul 14, 2025, 2:07 am • 6 0 • view
I wonder if slavery has anything to do with economics
jul 14, 2025, 1:49 am • 3 0 • view
I cannot fathom an adult trying to explain this to a child and not immediately realizing their oversight
jul 14, 2025, 1:50 am • 2 0 • view
i genuinely believe that lincoln was imbued with divine inspiration while writing the second inaugural
jul 14, 2025, 1:35 am • 145 6 • view
I just thought that although flawed, he was brilliant.
jul 14, 2025, 1:46 am • 0 0 • view
[] if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword [] 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'
jul 14, 2025, 1:42 am • 77 5 • view
It goes hard, and he was right
jul 14, 2025, 1:42 am • 39 0 • view
I'm always reminded of Tolstoy's anecdote about when he was asked to speak about Lincoln to some Circassians, who had heard of him and believed that he was close to the divine. That conversation led Tolstoy to conclude that Lincoln was closer to Christ than to any other statesman in the world.
jul 14, 2025, 2:05 am • 5 0 • view
In any case, I do not think there are very many orators in history who were as good or as skillful as Lincoln. Virtually every single one of his speeches is rightfully considered a masterpiece of oratory.
jul 14, 2025, 2:25 am • 3 0 • view
Any reading to recommend that shaped your views of Lincoln? Appreciate your presence here, J.
jul 14, 2025, 2:17 am • 1 0 • view
So good it doesn’t seem real. Fascinated with how internal theological struggles dyed both he and E. Dickinson’s written work.
jul 14, 2025, 1:58 am • 1 0 • view
Mississippi Declaration of Secession: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth."
jul 14, 2025, 2:18 am • 8 1 • view
Article I Section 9(4) of the Constitution of the Confederate States; No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed
jul 14, 2025, 2:24 am • 2 0 • view
And the "letters of secession" from the Confederate States which are awfully clear it's about slavery. Horrific things to read
jul 14, 2025, 1:45 am • 24 2 • view
Neo-confederates: it wasn't just about slavery Literally all of the confederate states, in their letters seceding: this is about slavery
jul 14, 2025, 1:50 am • 38 4 • view
Texas: also, the feds didn't help us kill Comanches enough
jul 14, 2025, 1:54 am • 7 0 • view
But very much mainly slavery. "They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy" right there in the TX secession
jul 14, 2025, 1:57 am • 16 0 • view
Like none of them were subtle about this. It was not hidden. [GA]: "we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery" [MS]: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery"
jul 14, 2025, 1:58 am • 17 1 • view
[SC] "the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States" [VA] "the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States."
jul 14, 2025, 1:58 am • 12 0 • view
In one of them they whine that the south is too hot and humid for white people to do hard labor!
jul 14, 2025, 2:07 am • 4 0 • view
This was a very commonly held view throughout the European colonies in the West Indies and Americas
jul 14, 2025, 3:00 am • 3 0 • view
The infamous "Cornerstone Speech" by the VP of the Confederacy makes it plain that slavery is what they really cared about. www.battlefields.org/learn/primar...
jul 14, 2025, 2:26 am • 1 0 • view
Also some of them speaking as individuals -- like Jefferson Davis's farewell to the US Senate, expressing a view of "states' rights" which is... not easy to reconcile with postwar revisionism. (Per Jeff, the *northern* states had claimed an unfounded right to annul the Fugitive Slave Act.)
jul 14, 2025, 1:59 am • 0 0 • view
The whole thing is a spine freezer, no doubt.
jul 14, 2025, 2:00 am • 0 0 • view