# Am I a confederate apologist? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 3, 2001, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597 "2001-03-03T04:14:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Ivorybill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ee59a6/32.png) [@Ivorybill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ivorybill)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2001, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597/81 "2001-03-07T19:07:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Needs2know \* > \*\*Why is it that I am constantly accused of not embracing my “heritage” because I am no longer entralled with tales of the war? \*\* Has anybody here done that or does that happen in your life away from the SDMB? > [@](#): > > I’ve been told by some that I am not really a Southerner because I denounce the public display of that flag. Too bad! I, for one, have denounced it. Check my reply to Collounsbury yesterday. IIRC, **spoke-** has denounced its use also. > [@](#): > > You and anyone else that cares to can attempt to make me look like the idiot because I do not believe in romanticizing the “Southern Cause”. Well, we really don’t have to try too hard since you’re doing a fine job without other assistance… Seriously, I’m not trying to make you look like an idiot; I’d just like for you to clarify your statements (and / or direct them at a particular post or point) so that we can actually engage in a debate. As it is now, you’re just maligning a thread with which you disagree. > [@](#): > > The “Southern Cause” is not worth romanticizing. It took it’s toll in human suffering from everyone involved. Again, with the exception of a few hard-core revisionists and a few drive-by revisionists, none of the “pro-Southern” posters to this thread have attempted to romanticize this period, period. > [@](#): > > And it still continues to embarass those of us who know better than to attempt and defend it. Do you mean that you’re embarrassed by Southern history, or by certain posts to this thread? I’ve been embarrassed by certain posts to this thread, and have been grateful that **spoke-** and **xeno** have been voices of accuracy and reason in the face of uninformed “yeee-hawwww” opinion. Okay. If the shoulder flag bugs you, how 'bout ribs? (Tenderloin, IMHO, would just look funny on a flag.) ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2001, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597/82 "2001-03-07T19:10:40Z")
See? **Needs** is as shrill as any fire-eater who ever strode the halls of any Southern legislature. ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597/83 "2001-03-08T01:24:30Z")
Needstoknow… The stars and bars is not the St Andrews cross. The “battle flag” as you know it. Here is the stars and bars…I see you do need to know… [http://www.icss.com/usflag/confederate.stars.and.bars.html](http://www.icss.com/usflag/confederate.stars.and.bars.html) ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597/84 "2001-03-08T02:36:51Z")
> [@](#): > > As for a new flag, I’m all in favor of the pork shoulder. Let’s just put the whole hog on the flag. In a suitably heraldic pose, of course. Perhaps over a crossed knife and fork. With Maybe a red and white checkered background. Any way to fit a side order of cole slaw in there somehow? Of course, the Texans, with their fondness for **beef** barbecue, are bound to dissent. ---
**Author:** ![minty\_green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597/85 "2001-03-08T03:43:37Z")
I wish to register a complaint. Dude, they serve pork as “barbecue” in the _Midwest_. You know, that place where they still call Coke “pop” and the couch a “davenport.” And you think you’re gonna use a pig on our new flag? Where the hell you from, New Jersey? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597/86 "2001-03-08T06:31:01Z")
> [@](#): > > Tom, let’s not rush to turn the carpetbaggers into white knights, hmmm? Their motives were not noble. They were trying to make money, pure and simple, and the post-war South presented a golden opportunity. > > The radical state governments imposed during Reconstruction were filled with office-holders whose previous experience had not prepared them for their positions. They were frequently unsophisticated, and easily manipulated by unscrupulous northern businessmen. The result was that the carpetbaggers and their scalawag counterparts cashed in on sweetheart deals and corrupted state and local officials. Of course, the carpetbaggers were not saints. They were capitalists and are probably all now in hell. (Check with **Stoid** on that.) The point, which you reiterated, was that they were there to make money: the best way to make money is to get a good return on one’s investment. There were also many thieves among them, however, thieves are always drawn to places in turmoil. I made that point in my first post, as well. As to the corruption of the legislatures and bureaucracy, that goes hand-in-hand with the general corruption that burdened the entire country following the Civil War. **Tamerlane** mentioned just a few of the scandals that rocked the North. I have a problem with > [@](#): > > The radical state governments imposed during Reconstruction were filled with office-holders whose previous experience had not prepared them for their positions. which sounds suspiciously like the old mythology. Many of the people who were able to get elected to the legislatures or who secured bureaucratic offices were from the suppressed white middle class who had chafed under the pre-war planters’ aristocracy, but I have never seen factual evidence to support the idea that they were “unprepared” for their jobs. One of the old myths (which you did _not_ bring up), was that uneducated blacks were put into positions of power as puppets by the Union politicians. In fact, the blacks who assumed offices during that period were as well-educated as their white counterparts, many having been escaped slaves who had become merchants, teachers, and lawyers in the North, who returned to their Southern homes after the War. In addition, while South Carolina did have a brief majority of blacks in the legislature and in Louisiana they neared 50%, in most states they held no more than 15% to 30% of the seats. The corruption had much more to do with the times than with any specific qualities of the people who joined in the graft. As John Franklin noted in his **Reconstruction After the Civil War** , “Corruption was bisectional, bipartisan, and biracial.” There is also no question about the level of debt that the states incurred or the incredible taxes they suffered trying to stave it off. On the other hand, that debt was not merely a relic of the war. An enormous amount of the money went into building _new_ railroads. (Much, of course, went into repairing war-destroyed lines and stock, but beyond that, the South embarked on a major (if uncoordinated) effort to attempt to double or triple the amount of railway they had.) Another huge chunk of that debt was incurred by funding education at a level never seen in the pre-war South. This provided the economy with an educated workforce. As to the actual growth, by 1880, three years after the end of Reconstruction, South Carolina had three times as many cotton mill spindles in production over the 1860 number and their revenue had quadrupled, North Carolina’s tobacco rolling establishents went from an 1860 workforce of 1,500 to an 1880 workforce of 6,500, the ironworks surrounding Richmond, Virginia established an importance that they had never achieved prior to 1860, and the ironworks in Tennesse had not even existed prior to 1866. These were not isolated events. I did not intend to make the Reconstruction seem like the most glorious age of development that the South has seen. Certainly, the South suffered with the rest of the country in the problems created by the Fisk and Gould attempt to corner the gold market and the South shared with the North and the West all the problems of the Panic of 1873. However, this hijack began with **Collounsbury** ’s offhand remark about “exaggerated suffering” and my comments were intended to point out that that period was simply not twelve years of unmitigated disaster. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597/87 "2001-03-08T06:52:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tomndebb \* > \*\* They were capitalists and are probably all now in hell. (Check with **Stoid** on that.) \*\* Dammitalltohellandgoneforheavenssake…I’m a capitalist! I’m just a left-wing capitalist! Jeezdamnlouise! I would appreciate it if people stopped using my name as a synonym for communism! puh! ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597/88 "2001-03-08T07:15:06Z")
Sorry. All you pinkoes look alike. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597/89 "2001-03-08T15:22:07Z")
Regarding the competence of radical government officials: Here’s a quote _from a Tennessee radical_: > [@](#): > > The great impediment of the Republican Party in this state is the incompetence of its leaders…After the war the loyal people in many counties had no competent men to be judges, lawyers or political leaders. Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction 1865-1877, p. 174. (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1978) Tell me, Tom, why would a radical participate in creating this “myth” (as you call it) of official incompetence? Here’s more from the cited book: > [@](#): > > Indeed all of the radical governments suffered more or less from the incompetence of some, the dishonesty of a few, and above all the _ **inexperience of most of the officeholders** _. > > (Stampp, p. 174. - my emphasis) Just as I said in my earlier post. You will be hard-pressed to accuse Mr. Stampp of mythologizing Reconstruction. Indeed, his book is intended as a revisionist _apologia_ for the Reconstruction governments. But he isn’t wearing blinders: > [@](#): > > The sins of the radical governments included fraudulent bond issues; graft in land sales or purchases and in the letting of contracts for public works; and waste and extravagance in the use of state funds. > > _Ibid._ Tom, you quote John Franklin in your last post. To do a little name-dropping, I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Franklin on a couple of occasions. He is a fine gentleman, but it is pretty evident that he has a revisionist agenda of his own. His work should be considered in that light. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597/90 "2001-03-08T15:35:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by minty green \* > \*\*I wish to register a complaint. > > Dude, they serve pork as “barbecue” in the _Midwest_. You know, that place where they still call Coke “pop” and the couch a “davenport.” And you think you’re gonna use a pig on our new flag? Where the hell you from, New Jersey? \*\* I knew some damn Texan would start bellyaching. Look, Cowboy, pork barbecue is the what Southerners eat. We can’t help it if a few midwesterners (and even New Jersey-ites???) have been wise enough to know a good thing when they taste it. We are flattered by their imitation of us. Face it. Y’all only started barbecue-ing cows because you couldn’t keep the much tastier hogs alive in that barren scrubland you call a state. ---
**Author:** ![minty\_green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597/91 "2001-03-08T15:53:18Z")
That’s the last straw, spoke. We’re takin’ our awl wells, our pickup trucks, and our as-God-Himself-intended beef barbecue and declarin’ this here land a _Republic_ again. Just keep that president of yall’s up in Washin’ton. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2001, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597/92 "2001-03-08T16:04:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by minty green \* > \*\*That’s the last straw, spoke. We’re takin’ our awl wells, our pickup trucks, and our as-God-Himself-intended beef barbecue and declarin’ this here land a _Republic_ again. Just keep that president of yall’s up in Washin’ton. 😉 \*\* Texas is leaving? Well, I think that’s one secession we can all endorse. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-a-confederate-apologist/56597.md?page=4)