I've learned in graduate school about how Memphis rewrote its history for the better. The city on the Mississippi River used to "Honor" Nathan Bedford Forrest as a person. Now, they correctly say he was a notorious slave trader. I mean, NBF was notoriously racist even for when he was alive, given he shot Black people at Fort Pillow and became the Grand Wizard.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/desantis-american-revolution-slavery-b2174224.html

Not defending the Confederacy but with all the bashing so common on Reddit, Youtube, well online period I think its time someone points out that there is nothing really special about the North using abolition to alter the tides of politics and wars.

I'm not gonna argue about the complexities of the ACW specifically such as how some historians argued that officially banning slavery wasn't really the end goal of the North but simply a tool to defeat the South (Even if Lincoln did sincerely eventually support abolition later on) or economics of Southern society, etc etc etc because I'm not n the mood to unintentionally start a flame war or discuss deeper issues and this is all out of the scope of my intention anyway.

I don't have any sources at hand ready and don't remember enough to quote specific incidents but when I was taking a course on British history, my professor mentioned a couple of incidents where the British banned slavery as a strategy in Africa and the Middle Est to disrupt the status quo of their nonwhite enemies while waging wars of conquest. Hell just like how some historians attempt to argue that the North really did fight the war to sincerely end slavery in the United States and paint the South as a Naziesque black hat villain, some incidents involved British politicians not even caring about specific regions or foreign peoples until they discovered about the issue of slavery and genuinely got outraged enough that they sent intervention (including places completely outside of British sphere of control as seen in events of Afghanistan) to end slavery and other violations of human rights, even if it tended to be extremely hypocritical. Hell part of the reason why the British government was so slow to send reinforcements to Charles Gordon during the Siege of Khartoum was because he was quite unpopular in Britain due to allowing slavery to continue in Sudan and other parts of the Islamic world he got involved in because he knew it was a necessary evil in this part of the world. There were protests against the war in Sudan and slavery was one of the hot issue.

You can find parallels in French, German, Italian, Belgian, Russian and Dutch history which is too broad.

I will however comment about Latin America in a bit more detail. Latin America had a system of slavery based on racism and blacks were at the bottom. It was basically chattel slavery with all the same evils that Southerners often did including use of female black slaves as sex objects. It was so bad that the Catholic Church attempted to try to curb the abuses of Latin American slavery and there were talks of outright banning it and Spain, as the most devout Catholic imperial power before America's founding, attempted to pass legal reformations.

White plantation owners esp in colonies south of Mexico actually started revolts against the Spanish Empire and Spain had to reverse the attempts and minimal changes came through. IN some of these regions, the decided course wasn't even to consider banning slavery but simply give more rights to slaves. And already this was enough to inspire outrage. This simply shows just how racism involving slavery was just as big an issue outside of the United States.

A lot of people love to use the Texan Revolt and how immigrants to Texas were outraged at Mexico's constitution banning slavery as the reason to start a war. And naturally this ends up getting the Confederacy and Civil War involved pointing out to the hypocrisy of the Confederacy and how even Mexico was more moral (Esp since Texas joined the Confederate side)........ Except this ignores a very key detail.

Mexico only banned slavery just a few decades before the Civil War. In other words when Americans were moving into Texas, abolitionism in the country was a very recent thing. There was plenty of controversy specifically concerning black slaves with plenty of parallels to the American issue. Not only did intense racism against blacks still remained despite being granted freedom........ But people don't understand just how much the government of Mexico was structured around racism. Without going too far into this off-topic issue, life for the average brown commoner was just borderline being slave n fact feudalism accurately describe Mexico's society during this time. And just like the "white trash" of the Deep South who didn't have a mass revolution because they had the "niggers" to feel superior to, the average dark skinned Mestizo spat down on not just blacks but also mostly Native Indian citizen and this was used as a means of keeping stability and order within the country.

And while we are at it, apologists for the Texans Revolution love to point out how Mexicans joined the Texan side because they felt Santa Anna's government violated constitutional rights........ Except most of the ringleaders on the pro-Texan Mexican side were primarily middle class light skinned Mestizos and Castzo with a few Criolles and Peninsulares. So it was basically white Latin Americans who was vouching for Texan independence. Even the dark skinned people who joined Texas tended to have more European ancestry and/or had property so it was not representative of the average Chicano living in Texas.

And I can always bring out the genocidal acts done against Native Indians similar to how Southerners wped out the "redskins" in Georgia and other states of the Deep South.

But the biggest thing I should point out? When Simon Bolivar was waging his revolution against Spain, it was a pretty brutal stalemate. Despite stunning victories and hesitancy of Europeans to get involved too much, Bolivar was in a landlock without any progress. So he decided to start abolishing slavery in his territory and proclaimed any one who fights for him gets granted immediate freedom. This was a huuggeee blow to the Spaniards and many of the same results of the Emancipation Proclamation occurred. It changed the tide of the war. Except Bolivar even got one big advantage the Union didn't-direct support from the British Empire including troops sent to reinforce Bolivar. Even in Haiti and Jamaica individuals were supporting him with finance and resources.

Just like the New York riots and other outrages, Bolivar angered plenty of people who were previously neutral or lighthearted supporters on his side and even a few of his hardliners facing much of the difficulty Lincoln did after issuing abolition.

I will stop here because I'm teetering at the edge of going too far into other countries' histories. But the gist of it is the American Civil War and Lincoln's emancipation isn't really special in the grand scheme of history. Bolivar got a sudden boost of not just black supporters including boots on the ground for his infantry but even a lot of lower class volunteers from the "brown manual laborers" and so much more. The Catholic Church was already seeing slavery as a sheer evil and even as early as Queen Isabella shortly after the Aztecs were conquered were Spaniard politicians including Isabella was horrified at the enslavement of Aztecs and various conquered people. While they chose the immoral third path of bringing slaves from Africa, as early as Charles II already there were nobles in Spain and Portugal including a few of Charles' family who saw slavery of the black as morally questionable. While a full Civil War or Revolution didn't break out in Brazil, the abolition of Slavery by the monarchy rocked the whole country and almost inspired a big war.

I will still resume being neutral specifically on ACW factions and politics but I just had to point out just how nasty and stage altering slavery is for the rest of the world. Whether you believe the Confederacy was worse than the Nazis or the Union really fought because they truly believe slavery was wrong or how economics was entwined with the war and so on, all the bashing on Reddit and Youtube and the rest of the internet about how uniquely evil the chattel slavery of the South was and how I keep seeing comments like how Texans were hypocrites for rebelling against Mexico because they wanted to keep slaves (as well as the other extreme of Mexicans joining Texans in the Revolt because Santa Anna violated federal law so argued by conservative apologists) and so on.......

Its time someone pointed out what was going on in the rest of the world and how Slavery wasn't a uniquely American issue as seen in how Charles Gordon lost Khartoum because support for him came too slow too late (with slavery being one of the reasons for hesitancy if not outright opposition towards Gordon). Bolivar had done the Emancipation Proclamation decades before Lincoln did.

I think all the blind criticism towards the South and worship of the North as well as frequent comments towards other countries that ignore context (such Hispanic countries being more progressive than the Deep South during the same time period because of large mixed population and black slaves being allowed to marry whites) is giving a really warped if not dangerous few on not just slavery but race and political issues period. Since nobody else seems to be willing to do it, I decided to finally touch this elephant in the room.

(And before anyone gets smart, I have Turkish ancestry so I would most definitely be considered a dirty nonwhite by the Confederacy even if I do look white so you can't pull out the Southern apologist card-hell I avoided examples from my maternal family's country of origin because its really nasty there and I feel a degree of shame esp on the Islamic slave trade the Ottoman Empire was so involved in).