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brazzy 3 hours ago

Yeah, and he didn't like the outcome. Salient quote (from a letter to Robert E. Lee):

"I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo. "

sigwinch 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are several lies in this. The objective of a Confederate victory was to enforce slavery farther south. Mexico was a few years away from collapsing. Brazil would emancipate within 20 years. Would the Confederacy last 20 years as the last slave state in the western hemisphere?

SoftTalker 43 minutes ago | parent [-]

Slavery would not have lasted, as the mechanization and industrialization of agriculture would soon make slave ownership uneconomical. Same with draft animals.

delaminator 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, he wasn't wrong.

XorNot 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Whining about States rights to enslave people is certainly a take.

Particularly when in context, the war was caused by the South acting to usurp abolition in the North via the legal system (i.e. Dredd Scott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott)

The importance and applicability of "states rights" is always oddly narrow.

b40d-48b2-979e an hour ago | parent [-]

    The importance and applicability of "states rights" is always oddly narrow.
It's also always ignoring the declarations of secession that all explicitly name slavery as the motivation.