>>791350>Unfortunately they’re not entirely wrong on thisThis is false. The surveys of US soldiers in WWII (The main source of this claim) were extremely poorly done with samples immensely unrepresentative of the actual military, so they don't really say much about their actual beliefs. I make absolutely no claim that US soldiers in WWII were Left-Wing, that they opposed segregation or that they weren't antisemitic. I am simply saying that, while WWII was one in which the Allied nations' main motivation was nationalism, the idea that they had no problem with the Nazi ideology is completely ridiculous. They saw it as a threat to their values and, as outsiders looking in, were more open to opposing their oppression of many minority groups despite the hypocrisy of doing so. "Jews are greedy lying crooks" and "I don't think we should slaughter Jews in the streets" aren't mutually exclusive opinions, especially when the oppression you're condemning is in a country that you already see as an enemy of your own. There was obvious ideological opposition to the Nazi's beliefs, before during and after the war. Was it in the same way we often view WWII? No, but it was there.
As for Union soldiers in the Civil War, their views were mixed and evolved over time but one way or another, they largely opposed the ideology of the Confederacy. This is even more true for the Civil War than it is for WWII. If somebody thought "Wow I really love the Confederacy and I actually think slavery is fucking awesome" then they went and joined the Confederate army, Union state or otherwise. Something like 1/3rd of the soldiers of Kentucky (A Union State) were Confederate, for fuck's sake. It's true that many soldiers who initially joined in 1861 saw the war as being more about preserving the Union than ending slavery, but this would change drastically over the course of the war and it doesn't even mean that they actually supported slavery. Most Anti-Slavery people before the Civil War were NOT abolitionists, this is something people never seem to get. They were worried about the economic and societal effects of abruptly ending slavery nationwide, but they absolutely did not support it. Otherwise, they wouldn't have voted to end slavery in their own states. The plan of most Anti-Slavery people was to end the expansion of slavery and gradually choke it out without running the risk of fighting a Civil War, eventually abolishing it when it was safer to do so. Abolitionists rightfully disagreed, and recognized that slavery was so evil that its abolition was imperative and could not wait, regardless of the danger of doing so. But most Anti-Slavery people did not believe black people should have equal rights (Abolitionists generally did, though). Then the war happened. Over the course of the war, Union soldiers became increasingly hostile to slavery and its supporters. They saw firsthand what slavery really was in a way that many Northerners at the time did not understand, they saw the brutality and they met black people who fled it. They weren't Marxists, but believe me when I tell you and listen clearly: By the end of the war, something like half of Union soldiers supported equal rights for black people and a majority, at a minimum, wanted to expand their rights beyond emancipation. It was FAR, FAR more popular than they would like you to believe. Official newspapers of regiments openly called for full equal rights for black men, and the political groups formed by Union veterans after the war were heavily aligned with Radical Republicans and called for universal male suffrage. Many even supported reparations in the form of giving the land of slave owners to their slaves, which was implemented to some extent before being reversed by Andrew Johnson. This myth of the White Supremacist Union Soldier was only even remotely true early in the war and was blatantly false by the end of it. Speaking of White Supremacy, George Pendleton (The running mate of pro-Slavery 1864 Democratic presidential candidate George McClellan) would run around giving speeches about how America was a "White Man's country" and people HATED it. Even the Democrats saw it as an enormous detriment to their campaign, and the same shit would happen AGAIN in 1868 with Francis Preston Blair Jr. (Democratic Vice Presidential candidate in 1868) giving revolting speeches about the "evil of the Black man" and described a future of "Black men raping White women". People were horrified! Furthermore, they didn't even see the war as being purely about preserving the Union by the end of it, fuck, the US GOVERNMENT ACTIVELY WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY TO MAKE THE WAR ABOUT THE ISSUE OF SLAVERY. This was one of the main purposes of the Emancipation Proclomation, issued after Lincoln had gained sufficient goodwill from the Union victory at Antietam. It was to envision the war as a struggle not just for the Union, but against slavery, thereby making the possibility of British or French pro-Confederate intervention political poison among their respective populations. Please learn about the Civil War before making stupid claims, Union soldiers OVERWHELMINGLY voted for Lincoln in 1864 after he had openly stated that his intention was to end slavery once and for all.
>Just because someone signs something into law doesn’t mean they believe or want itDoes it even matter at that point? Do you think Grant, who signed basically every bill that came to his desk that expanded Civil Rights for Black people (popular or not, typically the latter) and was broadly considered to have been aligned with the Radical Republicans was actually repulsed by the idea of black people having equal rights? This was not an exceptionally controversial opinion at the time.
>Lincoln was actually for having black peoples remain slaves to keep the United States stable.False. Lincoln never once believed that slavery should remain, this is so historically innaccurate that it hurts. Lincoln was very much against slavery. In fact, it seems clear that he was far more progressive on Civil Rights than he was willing to admit to the public. Lincoln had even made a speech in favor of women's suffrage, although he later denounced it for political reasons. As previously mentioned, Lincoln went out of his way to make the public perception of the war about ending slavery and had signed off on Sherman's "40 Acres and a Mule" order. From his run for president in 1860, he promised to end the expansion of slavery and he as well as the Republican party as a whole refused to support an amendment that would end the expansion of slavery in return for enshrining it in the South. The plan was to END SLAVERY. Nobody in the Republican party in the 1850's and 1860's was fucking pro-slavery, that's ridiculous.