A House-Divided

[L Verge]

"Somewhere I got the impression that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, but states rights." And extra-territoriality, and economics, and centuries-old cultural differences, and plain old political power grabs, and fear of a highly centralized federal government.

As for why the non-slave holding Southerner fought for the Confederacy, I have always thought it was to support and protect the land of their birth (which meant their state to them), the fear of losing lands and employment to freed slaves, perhaps the hope of becoming a slaveholder, and finally just because the abolitionists and the fiery rhetoric of how evil the South was really got on their nerves (just as it does mine today)!

Eva, if you are referring to racial separation that had to be corrected by laws and statutes, yes, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supposed to correct that. However, there is still racial separation under various guises today, and each race is responsible for perpetuating it. The "guilt" does not fall on just one race or culture.

I will probably have a few cannon balls lobbed at me for repeating something my mother said to me in the early-1960s or before when we were going through the racial turmoils of the 20th century. "Laurie, if God had intended for all men of all races to live together in harmony, he would not have placed them on separate continents to begin with."

Remember one of my posts on a different thread when I declared that there have been times in my life when I though I was a Deist? Trying to analyze the racial issues that won't go away is one of those times. God created the varying races and perhaps even set them against one another, and is now sitting back waiting to see how we humans can reason our way out of the differences. Just a thought...