Stupid Things Racists Say

White People Did Not Fight A War To End Slavery

The dumbest take I’ve heard out of these racists in a hot minute is, “White people fought a war to free the slaves because y’all couldn’t free yourselves.”

Like, seriously.

I’m Tao Joannes, coming to you from the Dog Shack deep in the heart of Texas, and I am pissed.

Before I get into everything wrong with this misinformation campaign—the racism, the paternalism, the outright inaccuracy—I want to address why this kind of dishonesty triggers my alarm bells.

In the book 1984, the protagonist works at the Ministry of Truth.

The Ministry of Truth controls historical records to continuously update history and the news to align with the Party’s current agenda. They edit the record to make sure whatever information a person is able to discover always proves Big Brother and the Party is right about anything.

They say, “Who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past.”

Knowing history helps us recognize patterns, which prevents us from repeating mistakes.

So when I see such a widespread effort to change the understanding of historical events and reframe their meaning, it just pisses me off.

These might be new dogs, but they’re using the same old tricks, and they are dangerous.

I hunger for truth, and I cannot abide a liar.

So the claim itself—”White people fought a war to free the slaves because y’all couldn’t free yourselves”—is offensive on many levels.

The first being the historical revision.

So let’s correct the record.

White people did not fight a war to free the slaves.

Even if they had, trying to get some kind of emotional credit for it is like a drunk telling his abused wife she should thank him for no longer beating her.

The entitlement is breathtaking.

Slavery, but their official platform was not abolition, just opposition to expansion. Any new states added to the Union had to be free states.

The South saw this as leading inevitably towards the death of slavery. So they seceded from the Union and formed a government that made slavery its defining institution, explicitly enshrined in their constitution.

Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas all added additional language protecting it within their own constitutions.

The famous Cornerstone Speech by the Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens states directly that the Confederacy’s foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordinate to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.

Now, in the North, Lincoln rejected the idea that states could secede for any reason.

He considered the Union permanent and non-negotiable, and the idea of secession was simply illegal.

Lincoln said in multiple speeches and letters, before he was nominated, while campaigning to be elected, and after he was inaugurated, that he had no intention of abolishing slavery where it already existed.

He famously wrote that if he could preserve the Union without freeing any slaves, he would have done so.

So right away, we can determine that the South started the war to preserve slavery, and the North fought back to preserve the Union.

Now, when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in 1863, it didn’t even free all the slaves.

It only applied to states that were in active rebellion, which meant that Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri still had legal slaves until the 13th Amendment.

Nothing changed for them.

The Emancipation Proclamation was a wartime measure intended to disrupt the Confederacy.

So let’s consider the second point: the assertion that enslaved people did not and could not free themselves.

This presents enslaved Americans as some sort of passive and feckless creatures that required the paternalistic intervention of the great and noble white man to save them from themselves.

First off, enslaved people did free themselves.

If we’re talking globally, we can look to Haiti, where enslaved people rose up and completely eliminated slavery.

And then parts of Jamaica and Suriname did the same, although it remained legal in the countries at large.

Within the United States, hundreds of thousands of Black Americans escaped their bondage with zero or minimal assistance from whites.

Harriet Tubman might be the most famous abolitionist of the Underground Railroad, but she was by no means the only one.

She escaped on her own, turned around and then helped others escape, and then fought with the Union Army to defeat the Confederates.

Of that self-emancipated population, 200,000 free Black Americans enlisted and fought with the Union against the Confederates.

.........

They made up about 10% of the Union Army, and then there was about 20,000 that joined the Navy.

Now, back on the plantations, many military-aged males left to ......... fight the Union.

Enslaved people fled. They withheld labor. They slowed production. And when the Union forces got close enough, they helped.

Some even managed to pull off complete uprising and revolt and were in total control of local areas when the Union arrived.

So my verdict is that the initial claim that whites fought to end slavery because Black Americans were too passive to do it themselves and needed the noble white man is categorically false.

Any attempt to advance that narrative is revisionist history intended to shame Black Americans and deflect from historical and modern criticism of systemic racism.

Now, my point here is not just historical education.

It is to encourage us all to question these narratives.

Whenever something seems too neat, too one-sided, too self-serving, it’s a good indication that the Ministry of Truth is out there spreading misinformation to make us forget our past, condemning us to repeat our mistakes in the future.

When you hear and see somebody pushing these lies, you can use this information to push back instead of just accepting it because it serves your ego and comfort.

The truth is very often disturbing.

Have you noticed any other revision and doublethink in modern discourse?