Hi all!
My score was:
21% Dixie. You are a Yankee Doodle Dandy
The states rights argument was the Confederacy's fig leaf, which they used to cover the evil of chattel slavery. The states rights theory of federalism is old and not (I think) without some merit (see the 1798 Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_and_Virginia_Resolutions, authored by none other than Thomas Jefferson and James Madison). However, by using it to mask the institution of chattel slavery (as it was practiced in the ante-bellum South) I fear that the Confederacy has irretrievably & irreversibly tainted and stained it. Since it will forever be associated with the evil of chattel slavery, few will take it seriously and I think that this is unfortunate.
I include the following because I've always found it both interesting & moving:
"Radical Republican" Thaddeus Stevens died on Aug. 11, 1868. He left instructions that he be buried in a Lancaster, Pa. African American cemetery. The inscription on his tombstone says:
"I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude; but finding other cemeteries limited as to race, by charter rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life, equality of man before the Creator".
There was plenty of racism in the north too. Most northerners certainly didn't want the freed slaves coming north and unfortunately, by royally screwing up Reconstruction (by not enacting a general redistributive land reform, which would have benefitted poor whites as well; Kenneth M. Stampp says as much in his
The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877,
http://tinyurl.com/539og), the north helped guarantee that black rights would, for the most part, remain on paper only (14th & 15th amendments notwithstanding) when the last Federal troops withdrew from the south in 1877 and racist, white-dominated state governments were restored.
Be well!
MBZ
