Slavery

From the 15th through the 19th centuries the South Atlantic and Caribbean economic system centered on producing commodity crops, making goods and clothing to sell in Europe, and increasing the numbers of African slaves brought to the New World. The Bible mentions slavery as an established institution. Slavery was also widespread in Africa, with both internal and external slave trade.

In 1526, the Portuguese completed the first transatlantic slave voyage from Africa to the Americas, and other countries soon followed. As property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, and were sold at markets with other goods and services. The major Atlantic slave trading nations, ordered by trade volume, were: the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch Empire.

Slavery was an economic tactical tool to gain profits in the new world market. By the 1860s slavery in the states accounted for 33% of the population in the south. Abolition represented a major financial burden to the captains of industry. Money is what slavery is about.

For a hundred years the rich in the south justified slavery using the bible and pseudo science. In his Cornerstone Speech, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said (regarding slavery):

"Our new government is founded upon exactly [this] idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

The monuments erected in honor to Civil War heroes (and they were heroes) should now be considered to location in regard to the honor they are given. Many should remain but it must be a community decision. Personally I believe they should be moved when possible to a more honorable place where the respect they deserve for their duty to their homeland can be high.

The idea for which they served their homeland was a bad idea but the men deserve recognition for bravery. Confederate and Union soldiers are considered equal under federal law, President William McKinley cited reconciliation between the North and South in a speech that followed the conclusion of the Spanish American War on December 14, 1898. A number of former Confederate officers had volunteered for service during the war, which had helped secure U.S. victory, McKinley said:

… Every soldier’s grave made during our unfortunate Civil War is a tribute to American valor. And while, when those graves were made, we differed widely about the future of this government, those differences were long ago settled by the arbitrament of arms; and the time has now come, in the evolution of sentiment and feeling under the providence of God, when in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you in the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers.

The Cordial feeling now happily existing between the North and South prompts this gracious act, and if it needed further justification, it is found in the gallant loyalty to the Union and the flag so conspicuously shown in the year just past by the sons and grandsons of these (Spanish American War veterans).
What a glorious future awaits us if united, wisely, and bravely we face the new problems now pressing upon us, determined to solve them for right and humanity.

That flag has been planted in two hemispheres, and there it remains the symbol of liberty and law, of peace and progress. Who will withdraw from the people over whom it floats its protecting folds? Who will haul it down? Answer me, ye men of the South, who is there in Dixie who will haul it down?