Let’s just agree to mythologize American history

Not all of them had cherry trees. And those that did have, some had their slaves chop the trees.

The myth that is agreed on is that the southern rebels were an honorable opponent (and ignoring that slavery was the major issue), and after the war we all became friends again. Honoring Lee and Jackson was painless since they career soldiers who didn’t own more than a negligible number of slaves (Lee spent most of his career in the army, and his main connection to slavery was an executor of an estate that owned slaves, which he emancipated). The alternative to the myth is to let the old wounds fester. In Britain they had a civil war in the 17th and 18th century, and made no such myths about reconciliation, and they are still have problems pertaining to those wars.

One doesn’t want losers to go around with a chip on their shoulder, and for winner to gloat is bad policy.

P.S. And of course the civil war was about slavery, even if most southerners didn’t own slaves. All the compromises suggested focused on slavery. While most northern soldiers had never seem a black before the war, when they ran into slaves when invading the south they had a reaction very similar to how allied soldiers reacted when they discoved the concentration camps (the leaders knew about them all along, the rank and file didn’t, and it gave anti-semitism a bad name in most western countries whereas previously it was politically correct to be anti-semitic). While most northerners were only mildly opposed to slavery in 1861, by 1865 they were overwhelmingly anti-slavery.

RebYidd
I’m not sure if your comment has to do with current events, the removal of civil war memorabilia/statues. But I’m all for it.
Jews wouldn’t want to walk around Germany and see busts of Hitler/Himmler. The civil war was started for immoral reasons so why memorialize it in public and on government buildings. Put these statues in museums were they belong.
Of course you can make the same argument (based on my previous post) about busts of Washington but the reasons they are memorialized on american buildings is obvious. I’m sure there aren’t any statues of Washington in England.

The Torah endorses the concept of slavery.

Okay, the other kind of slavery.

The Torah kind. Eved Knani.

What about a Jew’s Eved Knani who runs away.

If the gentile seller owns the slave, why could he not sell him to a Jew (consent or otherwise)?

The Shulchan Aruch paskens, Halacha l’maaisa, even today you can purchase an Eved Knani.

Mauritania, Sudan, Yemen and Nigeria still have slavery. Until the 1990s many more countries had legal slavery. And contemporary Psak Halacha, according to some shittas, permitted an Eved Knani in the context of a mechanism to allow a mamzer to marry without the resulting children being mamzerim. Some of those psaks seem to consider Dina D’Malchusa inapplicable when purchasing an Eved Knani. Other poskim do consider DDD applicable to this and only permit it in countries that have legalized slavery.

akuperma,

The myth that is agreed on

Who agrees? All evidence to the contrary that there is any agreement.

is that the southern rebels were an honorable opponent (and ignoring that slavery was the major issue), and after the war we all became friends again.

The effects of the Civil War are still deeply felt in the U.S.

The alternative to the myth is to let the old wounds fester.

The wounds are very much festering. Have you never opened your eyes and looked at this country?

One doesn’t want losers to go around with a chip on their shoulder

You obviously have not visited the South.

@mentsch1
There were no states under the English King, just an assortment of colonies. Thus the states did not pay more taxes than the average British citizen. In fact political divisions don’t pay taxes, individuals (and now businesses do).
“Can anyone deny it?”
I just refuted it

“Let’s all agree to mythologize American history”
Why not? We’ve done a pretty good job of mythologizing our own history.

Re Slavery: Two types of slavery were practiced in the Colonies (later States).One type was Indenture, in which an individual was sold (or sold himself) to serve a master for a fixed period of time. to learn a trade or pay off a debt or any other cause of need, the terms of which roughly correspondto those of an eved Ivri.
The second type, and the type of slavery usually referred to, is chattel slavery in which the master actually owns the physical person of the slave, much as one may own a horse or a cow, the terms of which pretty much correspond to those of eved K’nanni.

Sorry, Joe. I intended those as two separate thoughts. I did not mean to conflate the denim of avdus with mythology. But as far as mythology goes, we certainly have, and continue to, mythologize our history. A trivial example of which is the Artschroll Gedolim series. I’ve always felt that if Abaye and Rava could, somehow, be transported to present-day Lakewood, they would not recognize the Judaism being practiced. Well, they might recognize the Beis Medrash and that the bachurim were doing something resembling learning. But much of the current practice would be unknown to them.