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In South Carolina, the governor has called for the Confederate flag to stop flying over the capitol. The governors of Virginia and North Carolina quickly declared that they would remove the flag from state license plates. Meanwhile, several of the country's top retailers -- including eBay and Amazon -- announced in quick succession that they would stop selling Confederate flag merchandise. Now MJ Lee reports at CNN that the debate over the Confederate flag is the most recent and vivid illustration of how changes in the business community can influence and pressure politics. "What you are seeing is a broad, acknowledgment across both the consumer, the political and the business community that that particular emblem is no longer part of something that should be a state-issued emblem," says GOP strategist Scott Jennings.
Walmart, Amazon, eBay and Sears announced within the span of one day that they would ban the sale of Confederate flag merchandise from their stores, saying they had no intention of offending customers. As Walmart CEO Doug McMillon put it, the decision was straightforward: "We want everybody to feel comfortable shopping at Walmart." Corporate and business leaders say that the abandoning the flag is a step towards inclusiveness for a region that has long struggled to shed negative images. "The business community -- they have a lot of say and power all over the country, whether it's on religion or ethnicity or LGBT issues," says Ralph Northam. "When you're running a business, you have to have the doors open and welcome diversity."
takyon: Alabama Governor Orders Removal Of Confederate Flags From Capitol
'Dukes of Hazzard' toy car General Lee loses its Confederate flag
Note: These moves are in response to the events in Charleston.
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Insightful) by linuxrocks123 on Thursday June 25 2015, @07:07AM
I think you're a little too generous to the Confederacy here, and a little too harsh on the North. Lincoln said the following after being elected in 1861, repeating an earlier speech: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Lincoln was no fan of slavery, but he never had any intention of actually abolishing it through federal coercion. Of course, during the Civil War, he just went for it because, well, why not?
The North's goal was containment. They wanted to make sure slavery didn't spread to new states, since the US was an expanding country at the time. The South saw this as an attempt to reduce their power in Congress, particularly the Senate. After Lincoln was elected, they decided to make their own country rather than see their influence in the US slowly decline as new free states were admitted.
The Civil War was a tragedy. It may have been avoidable, but sole blame can't be placed on any one individual, group, or region. See here for a Wikipedia-rabbit-hole starting point for the decades-long lead-up to the Civil War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Triumvirate [wikipedia.org]
Had we had great statesmen like that active in 1861, perhaps the South could have been convinced to accept slowly waning influence in exchange for some Constitutional guarantees about slavery -- like the last-ditch compromise effort of a proposed unamendable (!) Constitutional amendment that would have made slavery in the South completely outside the domain of federal jurisdiction. Had this happened, some hundreds of thousands of people would not have died.
Of course, had that happened, slavery would have stuck around for who knows how long. That's unfortunate, unless slavery would have died out on its own within a few decades. I do think that very well may have happened had cooler heads prevailed.
The South by 1861 had become radicalized extremists on the issue of slavery. Us-versus-them fights tend to do that to groups of people, and the South and North had been going at it in Congress for decades, about slavery and unrelated economic policy (tariff) issues a well. Radicalized extremists tend not to have any capacity for introspection. If the Civil War could have been avoided, and the South could have taken the North's concessions and both sides could have been convinced to stop fighting each other, over time it's likely the South, like all other advanced societies, would have realized on its own that slavery was wrong and abolished it. This would have become easier as time went on and the economic advantages of slavery decreased.
Instead, we had a war, which the South lost after much bloodshed. Savvy political maneuvering by Southern Democrats combined with a constitutional crisis in the presidential election of 1876 caused the end of Reconstruction in 1877, ending federal intervention in the South even though the South was still radicalized. Thus, we had the Jim Crow laws, the KKK terrorists, school segregation, etc., etc., etc. Unfortunate, for sure. Unavoidable? Maybe. Whatever the case, it's what happened, so now we have to live with it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday June 25 2015, @09:02AM
Of course, during the Civil War, he just went for it because, well, why not?
He went for it because the British Empire was planning on entering the war on the side of the South (who were good trading partners and who would give Britain a chance to put the rebellious colonies in their place). If slavery had been a side issue in the war, then it would have been the North against Britain and the South, which would have been enough to decide matters quite solidly in favour of the south. Once the war was publicly about slavery, it became politically impossible for Parliament to intervene in favour of slavery.
It was a brilliant bit of politics, but the fact that it took 30 years after the end of the war to actually enforce the emancipation proclamation tells you how important the issue actually was to the north.
sudo mod me up