анонимный вопрос
It seems to me that the best approach is to treat the events of the past with a certain detachment and not attempt to seriously judge those people by today’s standards. It is a completely different matter if someone today tries to dig up obsolete recipes and implement them in life under the pretext that it is a venerable tradition stretching back centuries.
Therefore, it is one thing to carefully study the complex collision of ethics and law that emerged in the 19th century in the USA, further complicated by the serious difference in economic systems between the North and the South and the immediate interests of politicians. It is another thing to consider, for example, the US Declaration of Independence a harmful document on the grounds that its author was a slave owner. And it is a third thing entirely to consider slavery justified on those same grounds—if Jefferson could do it, why can’t we.
The Southern states had both the legal right to declare their secession and quite valid reasons, as US President Lincoln blatantly violated the fragile compromise according to which half of the newly created states were slave-holding and half were not. So many funds were spent on the war between the USA and the Confederacy that it would have been enough to buy out and free all the slaves, teach them to read and write, and build them housing. More people died than in all subsequent wars in which the USA participated. During and immediately after the war, the powers of the federal government were expanded, and the powers of the states were curtailed. In short, the war was a huge tragedy, and of course, an outcome in which the market, rather than war, decided the fate of slavery would have personally suited me much better.
That is precisely why I have no theoretical objections to people voluntarily entering into relationships that might seem like slavery to someone else. But likewise, I have nothing against private abolitionism, if the abolitionist provides convincing evidence of the involuntary nature of the slave state. Nevertheless, I would prefer such activism to take place through means of moral pressure rather than through violence, because you don’t want it to be like the Civil War!
You can achieve more with a kind word and a gun than with a gun alone. It is believed that this phrase was invented only in the 20th century, and it is a great pity that Lincoln, who lived in the 19th century, did not think of it himself. My sympathy is completely sincere: after all, this guy paid with his life for his policies.
