[mdarens]

in 1861 more than 1/10th of what would later become the army of northern virginia owned slaves— 1 in 12 enlisted men and over half of the officers.

"only" 1 in 20 white southerners in the confederacy personally owned slaves on paper, but this is like making an org chart of the institution of slavery & only counting senior management.

if you look at the 1860 us census & expand the analysis to slave owning households of the confederacy, the rate was closer to 1 in 3.

[edoo]

Yet the emancipation proclamation only freed slaves in the south. Slavery was not outlawed for the northern states and over 3 million remained slaves in the north until 1865. That is called hypocrisy. It wasn't about the slaves.

[mdarens]

this is a hollow charge of hypocrisy, as i am not currently in 1865 arguing against the 13th amendment by saying the emancipation proclamation was enough. neither does the insufficiency of reconstruction absolve the butchers of the confederacy of their crimes.

[edoo]

I mean to order all slaves free in the southern states while keeping slavery legal and active in the north for 5 years is pure hypocrisy that proves it was not about the moral issue of slavery. It was a federal takeover and we are still reeling from the results. As long as everyone believes the south was just a bunch of evil racists we can't talk about the true effects of the war and the path it sent the nation down.

[mdarens]

this may seem like a coherent view of history if you view it as a series of decisions made by great men based solely on their personal beliefs, as opposed to protracted contests over resources & power by organized groups, like the radical abolitionists who waged a generational liberation struggle on every front to force concessions from the institutions of the day.