But slavery was like the holocaust, with its deniers.
We aren't even discussing the same thing here.
I know I said I'd "bow out" but I've got to say, this comment is a clear indication that you haven't read what anyone else on this thread has said, you don't care about any of the proofs we've posted for our arguments, and your emotionalism has overruled your intellect in perpetuating this "Dead Horse" discussion.
No one denies the evils of slavery. Time and time and yet time again, we have agreed with you that 1) it is evil, and 2) it was a cause of the Civil war, our caveat being that it was not the only, or even the primary, cause. You have ignored that, attempting as nearly as one can do on a message board to "talk over us" and make us hear you as though that will prove your point. It hasn't, it doesn't and it won't.
You exaggerate beyond reason. For example, slavery like the Holocaust? Let me ask you, do you think that a man back in the 19th Century who made a $500 investment in a slave -- the equivalent of $15,151 in today's dollars -- would beat him/her unmercifully, cripple him/her,
kill him/her? You're not using reason, you're believing the same kind of hypocrisy that the abolitionists of the North used in touting Harriet Beecher Stowe's
Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 to stir up hatred for the South in their campaign against slavery. I say "hypocrisy" because the abolitionists had no more feeling for the black man, woman and child than did their Southern neighbors, no more than Lincoln did, whom I remind you, was a "racist" -- but then everyone in the U.S. in the early to mid 19th Century was a racist, everyone believing the black "race" was inferior to the white "race."
The "facts" in Stowe's book were utter nonsense, completely untrue, totally fabricated. Yes, slaves were abused. Their very lot in life was abuse. They had no freedom, no ability to get educated (though some did anyway), and were often separated -- husband from wife, mother from child, father from son -- when an owner chose to sell them. Yes, there was violence, particularly when an escaped slave was recaptured.
However, your depiction is exactly as Stowe would have wanted it, portraying all slave owners as evil, heartless, cruel Simon Legrees. The truth is, there might have been a handful of Simon Legrees in the South, but with slaves being essentially "investments" -- a cruelty in itself -- it is no more likely a slave was going to be physically mistreated than it is that one of today's farmers is going to run his big John Deere combine into a ravine because it isn't working properly. What you have spoken here is utter nonsensical emotionalism. You need to learn the facts.
