Statistically speaking he was a poor man simping for slavers, not a slaver himself. But I suppose you could philosophically say that as someone who participated in (and indeed defended) a society built on slavery he was a slaver in effect if not literally.
Real talk, I suspect most of us, had we been born in the South in the 1840s, would fight for the Confederacy. We are products of our environment, upbringing, and experiences after all. There were abolitionists in the South, but they were few and far between. And as much as the war was actually about the institution of slavery, to the average southerner it was about freedom and state’s rights and shit because that’s what they knew and were told. People were loyal to their state before they were loyal to their country because they didn’t have much knowledge of the world beyond their towns.
What’s more, conscription meant that even men who didn’t want anything to do with the war were fighting in it. In a particularly bitter bit of irony, if you owned twenty or more slaves you were exempt from being conscripted to go fight for slavery.
I will say firmly that the cause of the Confederacy was evil, but I can’t find much more than pity for the average schmuck fighting for it.
Statistically speaking he was a poor man simping for slavers, not a slaver himself. But I suppose you could philosophically say that as someone who participated in (and indeed defended) a society built on slavery he was a slaver in effect if not literally.
He picked his side
Real talk, I suspect most of us, had we been born in the South in the 1840s, would fight for the Confederacy. We are products of our environment, upbringing, and experiences after all. There were abolitionists in the South, but they were few and far between. And as much as the war was actually about the institution of slavery, to the average southerner it was about freedom and state’s rights and shit because that’s what they knew and were told. People were loyal to their state before they were loyal to their country because they didn’t have much knowledge of the world beyond their towns.
What’s more, conscription meant that even men who didn’t want anything to do with the war were fighting in it. In a particularly bitter bit of irony, if you owned twenty or more slaves you were exempt from being conscripted to go fight for slavery.
I will say firmly that the cause of the Confederacy was evil, but I can’t find much more than pity for the average schmuck fighting for it.