re: Our University is not woke. Will remove Confederate plaques, study building names

quote:

---

how in the world can you sit in judgement of the CSA?

---

It's not that hard to sit in judgement of both. The CSA was only around for 4 years and all it did was fight a war primarily over the right to own slaves.

quote:

---

Do you really believe the CSA soldiers even read those articles? What do they write about in their letters home? They were not defending slavery. They were defending their homes from war criminals. The Union burned UA down for goodness sake, and you want to pretend the rebel soldiers cared more about preserving slavery.

---

I was speaking as to how wars start and how wars end, the answer to both falls in the political realm. War is nothing than the extension of politics by other means.

That has been true of all war since the birth of civilizations.

The propaganda to stir the morale of the troops and energize the passion of the people is a seperate matter. The passion of the people act on both politics and the conduct of warfare, but the true nature of war between civilizations is political.

Slavery was a dying institution worldwide and, to put it bluntly, a factor of production that was soon to become obsolete or, at worst extremely inefficient with the mechanical revolution.

But, to your point, yes, the poor white southerner had every bit of interest to fight against slaves gaining their freedom and any sense of freedom that resembled equality to them as a man (both of which went into high gear with the Emancipation Proclamation).

This is evident in two basic concepts (one just mentioned). Although the majority of southerners owned no slaves, the status symbol of the wealthy and elite was property and slaves, so, yes, most likely all southerners aspired to own them. Moreover, it was the sense of racial superiority. The only thing some poor dirt farmers had going for them across the South was that they weren't black and held at least a higher status from that alone. The latter is the prevalent mindset that caused the longest lasting turmoil (and contributes to the systemic nature of the problem) between the races. So, yes, fighting to keep that edge coupled with all of the propoganda of the war of Northern aggression intended to burn, rape and pillage the South kept southerners engaged. That said, Confederate conscription started as early as 1862 and continued throughout the war, strictly because of the inability to muster and retain adequate numbers of Soldiers for what became a war of attrition where the South could not keep up in terms of manpower.

That said, there were plenty of pro-Union pockets across the south. Grant exploited that to a great degree. The 1st Alabama Cavalry was a union force composed primarily of these supporters and aided the efforts of Union. The intent toward the end of the war was to make the people feel the war in the South and to make and maintain contact with the Army of Northern VA. Both proved critical to breaking the spirit of the South and allowing for the eventual surrender of Lee.

I actually approve of this. Time to change another name long associated with racism...

Democrats.

quote:

---

e: Our University is not woke. Will remove Confederate plaques, study building namesPosted on 6/10/20 at 3:27 pm to InGAButLoveBama
quote:
Do you really believe the CSA soldiers even read those articles? What do they write about in their letters home? They were not defending slavery. They were defending their homes from war criminals. The Union burned UA down for goodness sake, and you want to pretend the rebel soldiers cared more about preserving slavery.


I was speaking as to how wars start and how wars end, the answer to both falls in the political realm. War is nothing than the extension of politics by other means.

That has been true of all war since the birth of civilizations.

The propaganda to stir the morale of the troops and energize the passion of the people is a seperate matter. The passion of the people act on both politics and the conduct of warfare, but the true nature of war between civilizations is political.

Slavery was a dying institution worldwide and, to put it bluntly, a factor of production that was soon to become obsolete or, at worst extremely inefficient with the mechanical revolution.

But, to your point, yes, the poor white southerner had every bit of interest to fight against slaves gaining their freedom and any sense of freedom that resembled equality to them as a man (both of which went into high gear with the Emancipation Proclamation).

This is evident in two basic concepts (one just mentioned). Although the majority of southerners owned no slaves, the status symbol of the wealthy and elite was property and slaves, so, yes, most likely all southerners aspired to own them. Moreover, it was the sense of racial superiority. The only thing some poor dirt farmers had going for them across the South was that they weren't black and held at least a higher status from that alone. The latter is the prevalent mindset that caused the longest lasting turmoil (and contributes to the systemic nature of the problem) between the races. So, yes, fighting to keep that edge coupled with all of the propoganda of the war of Northern aggression intended to burn, rape and pillage the South kept southerners engaged. That said, Confederate conscription started as early as 1862 and continued throughout the war, strictly because of the inability to muster and retain adequate numbers of Soldiers for what became a war of attrition where the South could not keep up in terms of manpower.

That said, there were plenty of pro-Union pockets across the south. Grant exploited that to a great degree. The 1st Alabama Cavalry was a union force composed primarily of these supporters and aided the efforts of Union. The intent toward the end of the war was to make the people feel the war in the South and to make and maintain contact with the Army of Northern VA. Both proved critical to breaking the spirit of the South and allowing for the eventual surrender of Lee.

---

I appreciate your thoughtful response. However, I think the poor Whites resented slavery for it made them have to compete with free labor. For them, the fight was not about slavery, but a cultural one, and one in which their homes and family were being terrorized. Also, you are forgetting the revolts in the North against war. The war was not popular there.

Your argument about the motive of poor Southerners echoes that of people who claim that the problems of today's Black Southerners are due to stubborn, hateful White Southerners who would rather stay poor than be equal to Blacks. But across the South, Blacks have had ample opportunity to make something of the increased opportunities. Many have, but too many have not. The out of wedlock pregnancy rate, the crime rate, the murder rate, the rape rates, and the academic failures are due to negative behavior patterns, perhaps made worse via well intentioned, but destructive social policies.

By 1862, the North was losing, despite the enormous manpower advantage and had to rely on Irish and German conscripts to overpower the South. So the South started to have trouble then.

quote:

---

At least the CSA was fighting to remove a punitive tariff that made Southerners pay 85% of federal revenue.

---

Dey some good boys, dindu nuffin

quote:

---

Slavery was NOT the only motive for secession.

---

It was THE motivation for secession. Just listen to the words of Mississippi in their declaration when they seceded.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

It was the second damn sentence. The whole thing is a justification for slavery.

Second sentence from Georgia's "For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery."

Hell Virginia's deceleration is only two and a half paragraphs and the only thing it mentions is slavery.

quote:

---

I appreciate your thoughtful response. However, I think the poor Whites resented slavery for it made them have to compete with free labor. For them, the fight was not about slavery, but a cultural one, and one in which their homes and family were being terrorized. Also, you are forgetting the revolts in the North against war. The war was not popular there.

---

I dont even know where to start with this horse shite. Southerners who did not own slaves still supported slavery as a part of their culture or as they put it their “peculiar institution”. Slavery was ingrained in everything in the South and fear of free slaves or a slave rebellion was immense. The revolts in the North were mainly about the draft which the Union allowed wealthy men to buy their way out of.

quote:

---

I've posted the Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi secession documents already in this thread, but the Lost Cause Revisionist history is very strong with InGAButLoveBama.

Kind of sad too, considering that poster says they used to be a teacher.

---

Did you post the Cornerstone Speech? You traitor lovers would love that one

quote:

---

The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. [...] Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races.

---

quote:

---

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.

---

Yikes

quote:

---

appreciate your thoughtful response. However, I think the poor Whites resented slavery for it made them have to compete with free labor. For them, the fight was not about slavery, but a cultural one, and one in which their homes and family were being terrorized. You are forgetting the revolts in the North against war.

By 1862, the North was losing, despite the enormous manpower advantage and had to rely on Irish and German conscripts to overpower the South. So the South started to have trouble then.

---

Agree to disagree. My ancestry in the US is to the late 1600s and early 1700s when a bunch of Germanic Palantines were looking for greener pastures (at least on my father's side; my mother's family were a bunch of WOP Sicilians who snuck in through New Orleans and settled in Bham in the 1910s). The Prussian-English cohort of mine settled mostly in PA before making their way into the Carolinas heading into the American Revolution. Then, they worked their way west into Tennessee and resided in Winston, CO Alabama by the mid-1800s. Just a bunch of traveling church builders (if you ever run across a Pleasant Grove or Pleasant Grove Church in that tract, it was likely the same group). They weren't very creative.

That said, they weren't wealthy nor owned huge tracts of land or slaves. Although, I'd imagine they held the sentiment I mentioned previously. It is an oddity that their pro-Union ties led to Winston Co being the only CO not to vote to secede from the Union from Alabama. To borrow from a documented quote of my Grandfather Preacher, he "just can't see fighting against the flag that George Washington fought for"

Almost to the man they opted to go into hiding and sit it out or they joined the 1st Alabama Cavalry and fought for the North. Interesting history reading some of their first hand accounts of the time, after their term of service they were screwed coming and going back home. A Union Patrol would come through and take what they wanted and distrust all as traitors and Rebel insurgents. A Southern patrol would come through and treat them as traitors or cowards, and attempt to force conscription. A lose-lose all around.

That said, I have no aspirations that they were against slavery or thought themselves equal to blacks. In fact, I'd bet they fell squarely in the camp of being a afraid a well educated house slave may be freed and automatically be considered by some as superior to them due to intellect alone. However, it was a sense of patriotism for the Union that wedged them between both sides.

That was more common across the South than is typically mentioned in the macro look at the war aims and societal thought. The same wasn't greatly different in the North.

To your point, the North was growing weary of the war by 1862. They were not this loving, tolerant, non-racist group of white Americans. They were simply (and still are to a large degree) more racially and ethnically seperated to ease cultural tensions and clashes.
That is largely why integration was such a major culture shock in the south. The north was seperated just as much as the south, but had established support structures (schools, shopping, employment, and restaurants) that allowed for "integration" without truly having to integrate much of anything. That wasn't the case in the rural areas or across the South.

So, in 1862, there was indeed a lot of pressure on Lincoln to end the war. But, that pressure was economical. First term enlistments were coming up and they wanted to avoid conscription. Further, the influx of runaway slaves into the North brought its own issues as it upset the balance of society that I mentioned (worsened in the North after the 1863 EmancipationProclamation, as FREE MEN were moving North and settling. Moreover, everything west of the Appalachians mainly depended on the Mississippi River to get goods to foreign markets and the Eastern seaboard. And, those key Union states were growing weary of the lost revenue. So, morale was running low and patience thin in the North. This was worsened by the Union draft riots (that were really race riots) early in 1863 - I believe March 1863 was the first Union conscription, not 1862 as you mentioned, but could be wrong. Either way, by late 1862, Lincoln needed a win. He opened 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation and had already committed Grant to open the Mississippi River.

Hence, Vicksburg became the key that Lincoln wanted to put in his pocket. There was significant fear that those western states would abandon the war effort if the river didn't open soon. There was also a fallacious thought that Vicksburg would stop reinforcements of food and men from west of the MS and cripple the south. The latter was not a major impact on the southern war effort, but the former was instrumental.

Well, God smiled on the Union and the fall of Vicksburg (opening of the Mississippi River) and massive victory at Gettysburg happened within days of each other and changed the tide of the war. It restarted Union support for the cause and the South was on borrowed time going forward.

While most of this is really digressing from the main point, as interesting as I find it personally, the war was still started over the future of slavery and political powers structures affected by them.

Interestingly (or maybe not), I'd hypothesize that without the Civil War, and had slavery ended on its own natural course, which was certain to happen, the racial issues in the country today would be much better to nonexistent. Forcing such a societal change of established norms of more than 250 years in the Americas, followed by the reconstruction era, and on into and through the 1900s, the pride of the southern white male and its aristocratic elite were wounded. It drew out the real hate against the black man and woman that pervaded through the South for so long, as they lashed out against what they attibuted as the cause for their demise in standing and stature.