It's honestly interesting to me that Razorfist doesn't really seem interested in mentioning that blocks from America were getting shipped over to Chiriquí, now a province of Panama, and into early 1864 to points throughout the European West Indies. He did this as an effort to create a colony vassal state they can extract money from abroad. So the idea of Lincoln as the great emancipator can mostly be viewed as hollow given that fact. The thing though that Razorfist fails to understand is that there is a reason the Civil War happened but like the Lost Causer that he is, he doesn't get that Lincoln doesn't get to be played off ss a Tyrant and deny just cause Souther Agreesion happened.
[Only 16min into the video] So what really bothers me about this discussion, and some points that Razorfist hints at around the 14min mark, is that YES the civil war was primarily focused around slavery. People add a lot of modernism to that by ignoring a lot of context. At it's core, the subject of slavery is the age old debate of tradition vs industry. Like yes, the south didn't see blacks as human and treated them like beasts of burden, but I think seeing the south as purely defenders of what we see today as "evil" is contextually shortsighted. The north was quickly becoming an industry powerhouse, replacing many of the jobs slaves would otherwise be forced to perform. With more industry and urbanization came better education and a deep questioning of the future utility of slavery as industry objectively renders slavery useless. Of course this would ensure that leaders like Grant feel pity for slaves, famously viewing slavery and it's defenders as evil. A sentiment unlikely to be held if it weren't for massive leap of industry in the north. The south on the other hand intentionally refused industry and was largely poorer because of it. Choosing tradition to their own detriment. However, I contest the modern (and northern at the time) view that this was rooted in "evil." Consider that slavery at this point had not only been a tradition for almost 100 years, but also a right that the north was okay with up until the increased industrialization rendered slavery questionable. Today many people view the second amendment as immoral, and it's defenders as evil. If a 2nd civil war broke out over the abolishment of the second amendment, claiming the war was over "guns" would both be true and also a bit reductionist. Just like with "the" civil war, was the war over slavery? Absolutely, but people today ignoring the fact that southerners saw slavery as not only a tradition, but also a RIGHT being stripped from them, is contextually absurd. Bearing in mind too that slavery was the bedrock of the dying southern economy, by ending slavery, you'd be ensuring the sudden death of the south, economically. This of course being another factor people ignore. What bothers me most is that people like Razorfist are too intellectually cowardly to address the fact that, YES, a practice seen as evil today was very much what the war was over and instead of addressing why slavery was fought over and the many factors that played into that cause, he like others try to make (or invent) all these random other side factors the focal point of a war. The idea that the civil war would've started over something as mundane as tariffs is just silly on it's face.
I likely am gonna disagree with you on a few pedantic points (haven't finished the video) but that aside, I saw Razorfist's video when it dropped and it, LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE HE SAYS, was just mindless brain rot. I do not believe he read all the books he cited. At all.
![Razorfist vs. Lincoln: The Battle of the Century Before Last [Commentary]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
