Understanding History

I am just beginning to look into the history of slavery in the US to try to understand how we got to the point of having a Civil War supposedly fought "over slavery." I've previously written my opinion that's not likely what really happened:

Sometime DURING the Civil War, two Black slaves sought asylum at a northern fort and ultimately the base commander granted their request, after sleeping on the decision I believe. This was a turning point politically and in terms of PR for the Civil War. 

It was AFTER that the war became about "freeing the slaves." So our history books remember it as being about human rights and ending slavery, but that's not where it started. 

I don't actually know what really started the war.

I was born and -- except for a brief stint in Germany prior to age three -- mostly raised in Columbus, Georgia and planet Earth interprets me as a White woman. According to oral family tradition, I'm part Cherokee. (Natives: Shut up Pretendian White devil!) My father was a Hoosier. My mother was a German immigrant. 

I'm a Girl Raised in The South, thus the GRITS label on the site, but most Southerners don't really count me as one of them. I'm absolutely not someone whose ancestors owned slaves in the pre-Civil War American South.

I was briefly a History major in college and won some award as a very spiffy college student that year. I have an Associate of Arts in Humanities from a different college which I completed more than a decade later.

I'm aware this is a sensitive topic. Please at least read what I've already written and come up with better personal attacks than assuming I'm an apologist because I have guilt about MY family owning slaves. That's stupid on the face of it though it wouldn't be the first time some butthead on the internet decided to spew such idiocy at me "because she's from Georgia!" 

Yes, I am from Georgia. Neither of my parents were though. So try again, hate-filled lazy meanie face.

I recently watched this video:

History of slavery in the United States

I started to watch this video and didn't get far when I began this post:

Exposing Africa's part in the slave trade

Me elsewhere:

I think we look back on history and we project a lot of modern stuff onto it that distorts what really happened.

Also me and another someplace else because I have too many blogs:

Natives of the Pacific Northwest have a legend or story about the land floating in a bowl of water and describes earthquakes as some god pushing it down on one end. If you don't take it too literally, it's an extremely good mental model for how coastal earthquakes cause tsunamis to inundate the land with water afterwards. 

Most likely, Jesus being born in a manger wasn't a sad, humble beginning.  People lived with their animals and the animals provided labor, wool, milk. The manger was part of the house, something akin to letting the family dog sleep on the screened-in porch.

We hear "There's no room at the inn." and we think they were turned away or rejected by the Marriott as homeless losers and your kind aren't welcome here.

Most likely, "the inn" was an open field where travelers were allowed to pitch a tent and the statement meant something more like "An open field of strangers, mostly men, is no place for a new mom and her newborn infant."

So someone as a kindness invited them to come sleep on their veranda, which will be safer and more comfortable and a more appropriate space for a new mom and her newborn infant. 

Kings of old didn't have electricity or running water or flush toilets. The way people used to live pretty universally looks like poverty and abuse to modern peoples.

I'm only STARTING to look at the history of slavery. Until I watched the first video linked above TODAY, I didn't know all American colonies were slave states at one time. I imagine most Americans don't know that. What we collectively "remember" is them dirty racist rat bastard Southerners were slave states and the North was not.

It's not that simple. 

I'm interested in figuring out how we got to the point where slavery was once universally tolerated in the American colonies and then somehow became associated with The South who got vilified for it.

FYI: 7 to 10 years is substantially better survival than the mere 3 years in some Caribbean island.

And lots of women died in child bearing. Men died in war. Average life expectancy was often not high.

I don't KNOW what things were really like. I'm trying to find out.

And you can bet money whatever sources I find will be filled with inaccuracies and wild misinterpretations from present day authors viewing partial information through their existing mental models about life here on earth.

Historically, some people in positions of power were also slaves.

Historically, someone wanted to abolish slavery somewhere and the slaves rose up and protested it. Presumably, slavery meant something different there than what we know of it here in the US.

Many slaves were spoils of war. I'm guessing allowing them to live as slaves was generally viewed as more humane than killing them out of hand.

There's a saying that "You need to be able to afford middle class values." Most human societies for most of human history have been desperately trying to just stave off famine.

I'm trying to figure out how to improve RIGHTS because rights are worth more than money a la my previous example on this site that diabetes in Black Americans actively undermines the accumulation of wealth:

Some island off the coast of Georgia was left to the slaves. And their descendants were selling it off piece by piece in part because it was the only means to pay for treatment for diabetes which is deadly when untreated. It was becoming a White owned wealthy enclave of pricy vacation resorts.

I'm not ready to draw conclusions. I'm absolutely not pro slavery and not pro racism.

I am someone who grew up in Georgia, which is the birthplace of Habitat for Humanity, the highly influential blind singer Ray Charles, and the insurance giant Aflac. In fact, Aflac was founded in my home town of Columbus a decade before my birth and its history cannot be entirely separated from my personal history and the history of my hometown. 

I'm quite fond of Georgia and I see a lot of positives in Southern culture. I am curious as to what the hell happened that we find ourselves in the current state where people badmouth The South and feel that anyone with anything nice to say about it must have ugly motives for that impetus.

What I know of the place from actually living there for a significant portion of my life doesn't jibe with the crap I hear. I'm interested in trying to understand that disconnect.