CowboyT wrote:GOOD! We've been down that road already, and I'm glad that "Dixie" lost. If "Dixie" had won, the Lovings would never have been allowed to be married. Hmm...maybe these VCM folks ain't so bad after all....
I am splintering this into its own thread because I want to know more about the Confederacy from Southerners.
Chiefly I started this thread to break it off from the militia one, as I'd like to ask these questions on their own, and it can be locked if things get out of hand (seems to be a touchy issue).
What got me thinking was the reaction the post by Cowboy got, especially in the context of Loving v. Virginia. I think "disgrace" was used alot.
Now, here's the thing I want to ask, yes, its historical fiction, but had the Confederacy prevailed, what exactly do people think it would have looked like?
Would it have been like Santo Domingo/Haiti, where an aggressive force of black slaves led by mulattoes rose up and brutally massacred the frankly by that point lazy and decadent whites?
Would it have eventually rejoined the Union voluntarily? Collapsed due to economic or social forces?
I'm curious because if the passion this subject still evokes in some Southerners, what exactly do you think it would have turned out to be?
Also, many of the pro-CSA people I've spoken to are avowed patriots of the USA....something I can't quite understand. If you are pro-CSA shouldn't you by default view the current USA as illegitimate?
Anyway, these are just questions from someone who has no dog in the fight either way, so just want to hear some people opinions and ideas.
Plans were already in place by Davis and Co. to provide for eventual elimination of chattel slavery and gradual integration of slaves into productive, private, FREE society.
It was impractical during the war, even though only 6% of Southern landowners (some were even FREE BLACKS) owned slaves because the men were forced to defend their lives and property from the invading yankee hordes.
There was very much hypothesis that once the men had to leave to go to the battle lines that blacks would rise up and flee or murder their "owners" for the conditions in which they lived. There is not one instance of that happening. In fact, invading yankees were surprised in many instances that plantation negroes did not welcome them as liberators, for they knew exactly what was happening: their land and their homes were being invaded, plundered and pillaged. It is true, there are many counts of inhumane living conditions and practices, but there are just as many accounts of compassion, care, mercy and mission towards blacks in the South.
In the north it was made ILLEGAL for blacks to reside and, sometimes, even PASS THROUGH certain areas. There is a real reason the Underground Railroad went to Canada and not some "benevolent" northern city center. They were far more unwelcome than in the South. "Free" blacks were the antebellum equivalent of today's Mexican invaders. They were seen as job thieves and burdens on both society and culture.
The north has NEVER been welcoming of other cultures. Look at the way the Italian and Irish immigrants were treated in New York, Chicago, etc, and tell me about yankee "tolerance".
During the war Lincoln suspended habeus corpus, jailed thousands of journalists and publishers for speaking out against yankee atrocities and the truth behind the war effort, approved the use of POWs as human shields, approved the constant bombardment and pillage of civilian areas (total war) and saw his generals burn churches, farm fields and food stores, essentially guaranteeing that the people of the South would either submit to the yankee empire or die for their resistance.
Had the South prevailed what would the result have been? Nobody can say for certain, but we would like to believe that we could have been an agricultural force in the world and used the agri-industry as a base for trade with foreign nations, the united States included.
It would most-likely be a predominantly Christian nation. There would be no draconian gun or drug laws and people would be generally free to do whatever they pleased so long as they did not harm or infringe upon the persons or property of others.
People would not be investigated as criminals for defending their homes or their property with deadly force.
Taxes would be minimal and government would not have the authority to simply make up rules or agencies whenever it saw fit to exercise dominion over new aspects of our lives for our own good.
We would not have military bases in 200 countries around the world and we would not engage in foreign wars until and unless our own sovereignty was in jeopardy.
Slavery was such a red herring. Even a brief study of Lincoln shows what contempt he held for the negro and that he felt blacks could NEVER expect social or cultural equality. Now nearly 150 years later he has pretty much been proven right.
Amendments to the Constitution were passed either through coercion of Southern legislatures or by simply not counting their votes. The Reconstruction stole millions of acres of private land, much of it owned by citizens who DID NOT own slaves and was commandeered by government as "spoils" of war and divvied up as favors or in compensation (40 acres and a mule) to blacks who essentially had no idea how to run a business or farm land on their own, and some of it went fallow or had been rendered unfarmable by men like Grant and Custer's unholy scorched earth crusades through Dixie's breadbasket.
Historically-speaking there are hundreds of thousands of Dixie's sons who have fought and died for the uSA. A great majority than from any other parts of the country and a very great many with high honour.
Southerners defending Amerikha is not a rejection of their Southern heritage but an attempt to be regarded and accepted by their conquerors as honourable and commendable. What are the other choices? To be regarded as cowards? That CERTAINLY does not fit the Southern model.
I firmly believe that the only way to salvage anything of our founders' republic will (must) come in the form of another great schism. Some balkanization or another is the only way to provide the opportunity for this unpleasant and unnecessary event behind us and begin the healing.
Continuing to occupy our lands, tax our people and then demean us, demonize our heritage and lie about us only pours salt upon the wound.
I will admit that I had to do some research on Loving-v-Virginia, but one must recognize that such laws were POST-WNA and considered acceptable by the federal government who still recognized segregation as acceptable.
The South CANNOT be blamed for any laws passed after the war when their governments were sacked and military satellites installed. That period defined the future of government in the South - the South no longer held the reins.
The quiet war has begun, with silent weapons
And the newest slavery is to keep the people poor, and stupid.
Novus Ordo Seclorum
For purely economic reasons, full-time slavery would have been replaced by the same kind of slavery on the installment plan that existed in the factories in the North. Employees can be easily replaced, so you don't really need to take care of 'em. Slaves and mules have to be purchased, and each one represents a capital investment, not to be wasted or abused. Now we do have cruelty to animals laws, showing that there are morons who, owning an animal, will mistreat it, and there were clearly rich people in the South who were cruel to their slaves. But most people, even rich people, aren't morons, and had sense enough to take good care of their own means of production. Problem is, that cost more than employees, which are a fungible commodity; one's as good as another, and there's always ten waiting to take the place of the one who falls. Notice it wasn't until about sixty years after the demise of slavery that people started thinking about laws protecting laborers.
As a result of the resentment the Great War with the United States caused, the Alexandria City Public Schools were not desegregated until 1971 ("Remember the Titans"). One thing most people forget is that Virginia society was pretty much integrated until sometime in the Eighteenth Century. The first black folks brought over here were considered indentured, not slaves, and upon manumission, became full citizens, owned property, and married whomever they wished. Of course that led to the famous list of family names developed in the 1940's of persons who were to be treated as "colored" even though they looked "white". Proctors, Dyes, Means, and Goins, for example, people whose families had been productive citizens in Virginia since the mid-1600's. I am asserting that not only would slavery have lapsed into disuse, but the social problems resulting from segregation would not have happened, at least not to the extent that they have, had the United States not invaded and militarily conquered Virginia.
People put way to much emphasis on slavery. The war was about preserving the Union first and foremost. Lincoln said this on many occasions. The slaves to him were just a tool which he used to further the primary goal of securing the Union. He even went so far as to say that if he could save the Union without freeing a single slave, he would do it.
sudo modprobe commonsense
FATAL: Module commonsense not found.
gunderwood wrote:People put way to much emphasis on slavery. The war was about preserving the Union first and foremost. Lincoln said this on many occasions. The slaves to him were just a tool which he used to further the primary goal of securing the Union. He even went so far as to say that if he could save the Union without freeing a single slave, he would do it.
And the Southerners were looking for the same thing we are looking for today, State's Rights.
THE HIGH PRICE OF FREEDOM IS A COST PAID BY A BRAVE FEW. In memory of our fallen heroes.
wow, lots of good info from Wylde for sure. however, i felt the need to offer my 2 cents in about just a few items. First off, the civil war was about slavery, nothing else. for those who say it was about states rights, that can easily be proven as the wrong answer by the fact of nullification before the war. this war was about slavery. yes, Lincoln did say that he would do whatever it took to keep the Union together, and that seemed to include the elimination of the Constitution. he did do away with habeas corpus, and he did jail many journalists, one of which i covered in my senior thesis for college, a man by the name of Thomas Knox. He was the first and only journalist to be arrested, tried, convicted, and punished for writing about military battles. People such as seward, gen sherman, all believed that if journalists were truly allowed to have complete freedom to write, it would lead to anarchy in this country.
The big question seems to be aimed at the Founders and that is, if they believed in freedom so much, why didnt they ban slavery? truth is.. they thought it would go away on its on at a later date. and it would have...if not for 1 invention, the cotton gin. There are a few different types of cotton, and at the time processing cotton anywhere along the eastern coast was really a waste of money due to the time involved in processing it. the cotton gin however, made it possible to open the cotton market to this different type of cotton. and BTW, Eli Whitney did not create the cotton gin, a female did. but in those times, a female could not hold a patent, so Eli patented it in her place.
in MY opinion, if slavery had never been abolished, it still eventually would have went away as others described. with the advent of increased manufacturing equipment, there would no longer be a need for whites to keep blacks as slaves 24,7. instead we can look to the practices of Andrew Carnegie for how i believe it would have eventually turned out. Carnegie built "cities" for his employees right next to the foundries they worked at.
you also have to understand that some laws, such as the law against mixed marriages goes back to around 1691 i think it was. even after reconstruction period was over with, in our case, VA lawmakers held a state constituitonal convention to amend the laws in favor of whites, even poor whites. in 1901-02, the new state constitution favored disenfranchising blacks heavily, creating a new poll tax, and a test designed to fail the blacks by requiring them to read something and explain its meaning, the literacy test. i dont know the age of everyone on here, but there may be some that remember such testing as it was around in the 60's still.
the issue here is even if you abolished slavery, there were 2 problems; 1 was you cant simply turn off people's emotions like a light switch and 2, you had all of these blacks with no education whatsoever, and here they were released, on their own. One other item of interest, concerning the slaves who escaped into Canada, after the war was over and slavery was abolished, many came back to America. there arent any specific examples of how many slaves made ti to Canada, but rough estimates say between 30K and 100K. I could sit here all day and type about this, but i wont coz it may bore some people. i find it interesting though. i would like to pick Wylde's mind some more however.. finding good history buffs is hard around my area.
Snaz, you make the assertion that the war of northern aggression was solely about slavery yet you offer no evidence to support your claim. I would love to see your evidence. Wylde and others have presented theirs, where is yours?
I'm not bashing you, I just want to see what your assumptions are based from.
Ulysses Grant once stated that if he thought at all the war between the states was about slavery he would resign his commision. He also owned slaves untill Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation.
"The north has NEVER been welcoming of other cultures." And the south is more tolerating?
Tolerance is not a regional thing, it's an individual thing. I'm from New York, but there are no shops on the street with t-shirt vendors that say "We won the war, get over it." like the places around in the south that are still obsessing over the civil war. I've never seen a bumper sticker that said "A good southerner is a dead southerner." in the north, but I have seen one that said the same about northerners at an archery tournament within the last year. Tolerance? Not to me.
Now, I digress. I have lived in Virginia for most of my life and love it down here. I find people very accepting...except people that obsess over the civil war. I actually have a guy in my neighborhood that is (overly) proud of his Confederate heritage that will not talk to me because I am from New York. He did until I told him I was from New York. Tolerance? Not to me. And here's the funniest part: It was my great grandparents that came to the United States. We weren't even here for the civil war. But I'm lumped together. Now I know he's an extreme case, but do you see where I am going?
I love the south. I love the north. I love the east. I love the west. I sum it up as this: I am an American. I love my country. I'm glad to call you all my fellow citizens, and that we can agree, disagree, almost agree, might consider agreeing, etc. This is America, the greatest country in the world. Why do we still fight over something that happened long before any of us were born?
How did it go: United We Stand, Divided We Fall. That, my friends, is tolerance.
This post was NOT intended to stir up the pot, only to make a point from the other side of the tracks. If I offended any of you, I deeply and sincerely apologize. It was not intended to do so.
this is for yarddawg,
the issue of the War being about states rights can be proven wrong by the act of Nullification. Nullification said basically if a state disagreed with a federal law, it would just ignore it. That is purely a states rights issue but that still did not stop the war from happeneing. this proves it wasnt about states rights. to show that it was about slavery, Lincoln alone said many things about slavery being the cause of the war. Lincoln also agreed with the Corwin amanedment, which said that those states that have slaves, can keep them. I believe it was Harriet stowe who wrote uncle tom's cabin, met with Lincoln and he said first thing to her, so this is the lady that started the war. Lincoln also stated that he had no intention of ending slavery nor ending the fugitive slave law. At the beginning of the war, Lincoln instructed his generals to not free slaves.
i would hope that after all these years Frank, we can discuss something like this openly and intelligently. there doesnt have to be any name calling, i believe that every person on this board will tell you slavery was wrong. and i also think that arguing about the war's causes is a good thing. i was a history major in college, man.. we lived to debate things like this. i dont see a problem with discussing our past. if anything, it would be nice to see ppl do more research into stuff like this. i like to think of debates like this as treasure maps. we all want to get to the same destination, but we have different paths that take us there. 1 of the biggest problems with history is we were not around when those events took place, and as such, we have to do the best we can with what we have. i remember one professor told us all the time, "i may not agree with your ideas but as long as you can prove your thesis, then it will be accepted for debate."
I don't see a problem discussing our past. I never said that. My point is all the fighting and bickering. I will gladly lend my ear to anybody's conversation and knowledge. Heavens know that I could stand to learn a thing or two (billion).
You essentially discount your own hypothesis (an unfounded, untested "suggestion") about the war being over slavery by introducing the Corwin Amendment. The Corwin Amendment was introduced by Lincoln, not agreed to, as you say, Snazuolu. The Corwin Amendment guaranteed the South indisputable and uninterruptable PERMANENT chattel slavery. The South REJECTED the Corwin Amendment because it did nothing to reign in the federal government's fiscal abuses.
Oh, and Grant owned slaves until well after the war. He did not free his until the 14th Amendment was ratified.
The cotton gin, if anything, was the stepping stone which would have eventually led to emancipation by proxy of the Southern slaves. Industrial mechanization was making many previously hands-on jobs less so.
The war was purely about economic slavery of the South to the north, not chattel slavery. A grossly disproportionate amount of federal taxes were taken from Southern agribusiness and proctored to northern industry, railroads and other, at the time uniquely northern interests.
America is the "greatest" country in the world because it is the least worst. That is nothing to be proud of, in my opinion. I catch a lot of flak for holding that opinion from an awful lot of gung-ho, rah-rah-rah, "GO USA" types (and there are a lot of them) who can't even cite the founders' reasons for SECEDING from the British Empire, nor what the principles of inalienable natural law are.
Many of them believe that saying the pledge and singing the national anthem, waving a flag with fifty stars and thirteen stripes on it makes them "patriots". Most of them believe the military protects our rights from some invisible boogeyman.
I do not hate northerners. I hate yankees (and scalawags) who entrench themselves in the myth of Lincoln as some kind of hero, as a liberator of slaves (he detested negroes and there is a library of available information both empirical and anecdotal to support it) and preserver of the "union". A preservation of anything by sheer brute force is not preservation, it is subjugation.
Lincoln and his thugs did to the South what King George was not successful in doing to the colonists in 1776. He subjected them to a government they did not want for the single purpose of commanding them to do his bidding and pay his empire tribute, pure and simple.
It is well documented that Lincoln could not raise nearly enough troops by volunteer to wage his war for him. In fact, sentiment in the north was largely indifferent or even supportive of Southern independence early in the war, which is exactly why Lincoln had 30,000 journalists and publishers jailed or exiled. Lincoln resorted to conscription (draft) to fill the ranks of his early armies.
One great difference (and possibly the one which could have turned the tide) was that we received no official assistance from foreign powers. They did not consider the South a sovereign nation and determined not to become entangled what they deemed an "internal" struggle. They sat on the sidelines and waited to see who would come out victorious.
Had the French done that very same thing in 1776 we would still be British subjects, likely ruled by a descendant of Governor Lord Cornwallis to this day.
I have many friends from up north. I am going to visit some of them this weekend and share in what I expect will be great revelry and fellowship. One of my best mates is from Long Island and grew up in Lindenhurst.
We in the South act intolerant of yankee interlopers because we still do not want to be ruled by anyone and we do not simply accept that we "lost". We were invaded, conquered and subjugated to a government which has seen fit to arm itself with weapons of war and legislation which strips us of the rights our founders deemed uninfringable. We have seen our common heritage spit upon in the name of progressivism and at the expense of our own security, co-opting it by fiat to the government. Our security is ours alone to maintain - ours.
What we (I) grow increasingly tired of hearing is "If you don't like it, leave". We tried to leave once. We tried to leave and take OUR COUNTRY with us. What you really mean by that is get out and leave your country behind, because we want it. You don't want us, but you want our land without having to be bothered by us occupying it.
Something else which has always disturbed me about how the war was waged was (aside from use as human shields) the way POWs were coerced. They were given the option of swearing an oath to the uS in return for clothing, food and sometimes even parole.
Many of my countrymen died (Andersonville was a luxury resort compared to most union camps) before they would deny their country, their Constitution and their sovereignty.
The worst of it is that so many people want to sanitize the history of our culture and people. They want to pin slavery and, vis-a-vis, the entire plight of the black race on the South when, as "user" stated so succinctly, race relations were far better in the South than in the north until AFTER the war when our lands and property were portioned off by military satellite governments to the newly freed blacks... that is, what they didn't out-and-out steal for themselves.
The only thing most Southron had to return to after the war was their homes and their families - the only things they had been fighting for in the first place - and those things were taken from them. Families were struck asunder and lands were plucked from under them and given away.
Resentment? You're gosh-darn right there's resentment. And that same kind of "redistribution" if you will is one of the hallmarks of the current regime. Our private wealth is plundered to pay for the excesses and indulgences of others with no say whatsoever from the individual as to where his money is spent.
That is what the South wanted. States rights was one thing, but Nullification did not cover it. There were the rights of the individual which were an integral part of it and the federal government had shown that it was only willing to compromise up to a point where they still retained the ultimate authority, which is not how the Constitution was written nor the country founded.
Deo Vindice.
The quiet war has begun, with silent weapons
And the newest slavery is to keep the people poor, and stupid.
Novus Ordo Seclorum
Snazuolu wrote: . . .The big question seems to be aimed at the Founders and that is, if they believed in freedom so much, why didnt they ban slavery? truth is.. they thought it would go away on its on at a later date. ..
More accuratly, they hoped it would go away. In many of Jefferson's writings he worried (and even predicted) that the issue of slavery would cause such a rift in the Union that it would take force to preserve the new country. I will try and have the exact citing up here within the day.
As for why Lincoln acted to "preserve the Union" by force, I think Jeff Sharra had it right. In his historical novel Last Full Measure there is a {fictional} conversation bertween Lincoln & Grant. Lincoln assets that if doesn't preserve the Union by any means possible then it was like admitting to the world, espcially Great Britain, that the Great Experiment was a dud and we might as well run down the stars & stripes and run up the union jack. Note: while I am citing a novel, the Sharras were known for their extensive research. Jeff may not have the exact words, but he probably got the tone right.
To the contrary. it could be argued just as well that by allowing the South to leave peacefully (something Britain had failed to concede) the Union - which union was never in any danger of invasion or overthrow by the South - could have carried on in its own devices and auspices for as long as it pleased.
By invading and conquering what the north proved was that they were no better than Britain because theirs was a design to subjugate, by force of arms if necessary, a people with whom they no longer shared common designs and desires for governance.
Remember, the South wanted to go peacefully and had every intention of establishing neighborly relations and fair trade with the north upon recognition of their sovereignty.
Of course this would have meant a massive chasm in the north's industrial financing, which came from the aforementioned grossly disproportionate tariffs and taxation.
What Lincoln's invasion admitted, essentially, was that sheer brute force was the ONLY means available to preserve his precious union... and while the union of a wolf's jaw and a lamb's neck may seem an ideal situation for the wolf, it is likely to be perceived quite differently by the lamb.
The quiet war has begun, with silent weapons
And the newest slavery is to keep the people poor, and stupid.
Novus Ordo Seclorum
To further elaborate, being born in New York in 1982, the conflict is to be blunt, of no direct importance to me. And interestingly enough, I would have to say whenever I went down to Roanoke on business or to look at houses, I saw 0 Confederate flags.
Not one there, not even one on the way (except on the sign of a salvage yard off I-81 in Pennsylvania) all through West VA and VA. For contrast I saw several Confederate flags in upstate New York while attending college there! Go figure.
My education on the civil war was;
North good. Freed slaves. South bad. Had slaves.
Since I (as many of you have may have already noticed) am an argumentative fellow, I did my own research, and yes, Wylde is right, Lincoln has some horrifically racist and even pro-slavery quotes attributable to him.
Yes, Lincoln had printing presses smashed by Federal troops, and the aforementioned racism and stuff like that does take away "the Great Emancipator" mantle, yet they will never be taught in school. History is written by the victors and all.
Had to laugh at Franks posts, yes, there are no resentments here with the civil war in the North, its a non-issue. I have seen anti-Northerner things in the South, however, unlike the past where we came to plunder, now its to put down roots, we are taking money in, not out and benefiting local economies.
The South is winning the war of demographics in the 21st century....NY is losing even more congressional seats after the census results are used to re-figure everything.
gunderwood wrote:People put way to much emphasis on slavery. The war was about preserving the Union first and foremost. Lincoln said this on many occasions. The slaves to him were just a tool which he used to further the primary goal of securing the Union. He even went so far as to say that if he could save the Union without freeing a single slave, he would do it.
And the Southerners were looking for the same thing we are looking for today, State's Rights.
Though the law was not strictly enforced, Jackson quietly practiced civil disobedience by having an organized Sunday school class every Sunday afternoon, teaching black children to read, and teaching them the way of salvation. There are still churches active today that were founded by blacks reached with the Gospel through Jackson's efforts.
This relationship between Jackson and the blacks of his community was not all that uncommon in the South, particularly pertaining to whites who were devout Christians.
"In Jackson’s mind, slaves were children of God placed in subordinate situations for reasons only the Creator could explain. Helping them was a missionary effort for Jackson. Their souls had to be saved. Although Jackson could not alter the social status of slaves, he could and did display Christian decency to those whose lot it was to be in bondage…he was emphatically the black man’s friend." – Dr. James I. Robertson
"Soon after one of the great battles, a large crowd gathered one day at the post office in Lexington, anxiously awaiting the opening of the mail, that they might get the particulars concerning the great battle which they had heard had been fought. The venerable pastor of the Presbyterian Church (Rev. Dr. W.S. White, from whom I received the incident) was of the company, and soon had handed him a letter which he recognized as directed in Jackson's well known handwriting. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘we will have the news! Here is a letter from General Jackson himself.’ The crowd eagerly gathered around, but heard to their very great disappointment a letter which made not the most remote allusion to the battle or the war, but which enclosed a check for fifty dollars with which to buy books for his colored Sunday school, and was filled with inquiries after the interests of the school and the church. He had no time for inclination to write of the great victory and the imperishable laurels he was winning; but he found time to remember his noble work among God's poor, and to contribute further to the good of the Negro children whose true friend and benefactor he had always been. And he was accustomed to say that one of the very greatest privations to him which the war brought, was that he was taken away from his loved work in the colored Sunday school." ~ William Jones
Jackson preferred Union and didn't want war, but joined the war only after Northern troops marched into Virginia.
sudo modprobe commonsense
FATAL: Module commonsense not found.
Snazuolu wrote:this is for yarddawg,
the issue of the War being about states rights can be proven wrong by the act of Nullification. Nullification said basically if a state disagreed with a federal law, it would just ignore it. That is purely a states rights issue but that still did not stop the war from happeneing. this proves it wasnt about states rights. to show that it was about slavery, Lincoln alone said many things about slavery being the cause of the war. Lincoln also agreed with the Corwin amanedment, which said that those states that have slaves, can keep them. I believe it was Harriet stowe who wrote uncle tom's cabin, met with Lincoln and he said first thing to her, so this is the lady that started the war. Lincoln also stated that he had no intention of ending slavery nor ending the fugitive slave law. At the beginning of the war, Lincoln instructed his generals to not free slaves.
Other than the colored text above, your arguments seem to conflict with your statement of the war being about slavery.
Lincoln agreed that states that have slaves can keep them. Lincoln had no intention of ending slavery nor ending the fugitive slave law. Lincoln instructed his generals to not free the slaves.
i believe that every person on this board will tell you slavery was wrong.
I agree!
"i may not agree with your ideas but as long as you can prove your thesis, then it will be accepted for debate."
