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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 8th, 2023

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  • Saying it was about taxes leaves it open to “unfair taxes without representation”.

    Yeah? Well I’d argue that saying “slavery” leaves it open for “the strengthening the federal government in support of slavery.”

    So yeah, I’ll take down votes in exchange for details. That shit often matters in history

    I’m gonna presume to know something about the majority of internet strangers who’ve downvoted you: they didn’t downvote your details. They downvoted your assertion that the details challenge the idea that it was about slavery. It seems to us like you’re being overly pedantic.

    You’re not a martyr for truth, you’re a martyr for your personal opinion on the answer to the question “assuming the Civil War was principally about strengthening the federal government in support of slavery: is saying that the Civil War was about slavery a reasonable summation?”

    If instead of saying “it wasn’t about slavery bc …” you’d just said “for some added nuance, …”, then most of your downvotes would be from ppl challenging your information.

    As for that information, do you have any arguments against what GoodbyeBlueMonday or banneryear1868 have said? They are, so far, the only ppl to cite actual sources, and it apprears neither of them agree with your assertion that it wasn’t “about slavery”. And reading/listening to their sources doesn’t convince me of that, either.


  • It sounds like your argument is “if it’s okay to be reductionist, then there are no limits.” But there can totally be limits - it depends on the size of the leap.

    All of your posts can be boiled down to “it was about strengthening the federal government, specifically in support of slavery”, but reducing this further to “it was about slavery” isn’t a big leap. That’s what the downvotes are all telling you.

    Saying the American Revolution was about

    England trying to collect taxes after not really caring while simultaneously cracking down on smuggling

    And boiling that down to “it was about tea” is a WAY bigger leap than the one about the Civil War.

    A similarly sized leap would probably be saying “it was about taxes.” Personally, I wouldn’t care enough to “um, actually” someone who’d make that kind of leap.