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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Reparations were paid already - 360,222 deaths from Americans fighting to end the confederacy.  That’s more than reparations paid in blood, anguish and heartache [/quote]

So ignorant. Nearly 200k free black men and escaped slaves fought for the Union. Also, the Union was not finding to end slavery - they were fighting to keep the union together. There were slave-owning states within the Union, e.g., MARYLAND. [/quote]

OMG.  You are literally giving history lessons from racist Southern high schools.  [/quote]

Let us take a minute to pray for your teachers, clearly they failed you tremendously. Reparations were not paid because white Americans died to free slaves while fighting in the Union army. Many POC fought for the Union. The war itself was not about ending slavery - it was indeed about preserving the Union. This is why, for example, the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to Maryland: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/the-not-quite-free-state-maryland-dragged-its-feet-on-emancipation-during-civil-war/2013/09/13/a34d35de-fec7-11e2-bd97-676ec24f1f3f_story.html. [/quote]
My.teachers taught me very well, thank you.  Slavery was THE ISSUE that divided the union.  Southern schools downplay this fact, I hear it from Southerners all the time.

There is no doubt that Lincoln intended to end slavery and that the South seceded for this reason.  However Lincoln envisioned a gradual peaceful process.  The war made that impossible. The Emancipation Proclamation exempted Unionist slave states to keep them loyal.  This was a political move by Lincoln to help win the war, particularly as it applies to Maryland, because he could not win if Washington DC was surrounded by rebel states.

And of course, once the war was over, the Constitution was amended to end slavery everywhere.

Stop getting your history from newspapers and take a class in history.

And stop being so rude in your own ignorance.  You are not helping your cause.[/quote]

Just digressing a second because this question seems interesting to me: Let's say that the white Union soldiers who died were not, by and large, fighting to end slavery but were fighting to preserve the Union. Let's also say, however, that their service and their deaths were necessary to end slavery. Assuming those two things to be true, shouldn't their deaths count against white American's debts to slaves and their descendants? Or do those deaths only count if the soldiers were pure of heart?

(Personally, I don't think this is a debt that can be paid and there are big problems in determining who would owe what to whom among the living. The reason to address the issue is to fix problems that we have today; to make our country better. Not to settle up some sort of balance sheet. But, assuming the underlying premise of debts owed and debts paid, I'm curious about how much the deaths of Union soldiers who were not pure of heart should count.) [/quote]

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