(NOTE: Lest you fear this post will lead into yet another
Deo Vindice rant, it DOES tie into the OT at the end.)
As casualties mounted, Lincoln considered ending slavery one of the larger purposes the war might serve.
Yes, because he needed Britain and France's unflagging support. As did the South, hence both sides' movements towards abolition.
It's interesting (you know, in that sick sort of way) that before the War even got started, Congress was ready to pass (and Lincoln ready to sign) a proposed 13th Amendment that read thus: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof,
including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."
Sad that the *only* reason slavery got abolished, in the end, was because one group of white men wanted to punish another group of white men by forcing them back into a Union at bayonet-point and decided to add insult to injury by promising all former slaves forty acres and a mule.
And we all know how well the noble North made good on
that promise.
Blacks were used, rather, in attempts to preserve both Southern Agrarianism
and Northern Industrialism. The fact that they were freed is good and right, though the circumstances for their being freed did not lead to their being
valued (and actually led up to some of the current racial tensions we see today, imo).
Therefore, it behooves us to see racism for what it really is: the objectifying of one people by another people -- the making of the "objects" into pawns for the objectifiers' gains -- marginalizing, oppressing, and stereotyping them by any means necessary so that "our way of life" is not disturbed.
