I came across a website called http://www.confederatestatesofamerica.org/. As one may guess, the site is dedicated to the 147-year-old lost cause of the southern Confederacy. On the site, there are very extensive explanations as to how the C.S.A. still exists as an “occupied nation” and that they were holding true to the principles of the Declaration of Independence when they seceded (though I suppose the “All Men are Created Equal” clause had already been ignored). They say that slavery was not the reason they left the Union - even though they were all slave states - but in reality it was because of state’s rights. What caused the state’s rights issue? Whether or not a state could hold slaves. There are bizarre explanations and appeal to “divine authority” throughout the site, and I am guessing that it is run by someone who has nothing better to do (anyone can make a website call themselves president of their own society). What baffles me is why sentiments like these continue even into the 21st century, when the vast majority of current occupants of the Southern U.S. can’t trace their lineage back to the Civil War era and/or want nothing to do with such sentiments? What causes people to be so stubborn and unreasonable? Any ideas?
Normally I pray for a good ol’ Armenian Genocide thread, but this will do.
I live in Georgia and states rights are still a huge issue - mainly to avoid the Establishment Clause as opposed to racial issues though. I would guess about 30-40% of Confederate sympathizers are still segregationists. Most just hate the North instead.
No, not, I think, a majority. Except here in Florida.
A number of the confederate states made explicit reference to slavery in their articles of secession. Cite.
As did the Confederate Constitution.
I wonder why the South wasn’t shamed to the core in the way that postwar Germany was shamed by the Holocaust and other Nazi insanity? Not wishing to Godwinize things here mind (before I get flamed), and certainly the levels of evilness involved weren’t exactly what I would call comparable, but I’ve always wondered that. Germany still has their Neo-Nazis of course, but they are on the fringe of the fringe; you won’t find many swastikas there like you’ll see Confederate flags here.
I think one factor may have been while many in the North detested succession, opinions on racism were more varied with a substantial population of people in agreement with Southern racists on the subject of black inferiority. The North never had Jim Crow, but de facto segregation was very prevalent.
Most “Sundown Towns” were outside the South (where the white people in most towns were at least accustomed to having blacks around). And remained “Sundown Towns” well into the 1960s.
When South Carolina seceded it issued a proclamation explaining why it was doing so. And it did mention states rights.
It was against them.
They said one of the big reasons they were seceding was because the federal government was allowing individual states to enact their own policies on slavery and some states were prohibiting it. The South Carolinians said the federal government should have stepped in and overruled those states.
Nazi Germany is still in living memory. Give it another hundred years and history may get rewritten. Some people might start claiming that the Nazis weren’t really about anti-semitism and displaying a swastika is just a celebration of German heritage.
Yes, but by the early 20th century at least, people in the south had constructed a romantic ideal of antebellum southern society, the war and its aftermath.
http://www.scv.org/pdf/ConfederateCatechism.pdf (warning PDF)
This is from the third edition (1929) of A Confederate Catechism which is held to be true by the Sons of Confederate Veterans today. Somehow it seeped into their minds that slavery had nothing to do with the war.
I’ve no doubt there’s some areas of the internet where you’d already find such claims.
If you think the Confederate states were not shamed then you know damn little about reconstruction.
In my experience people who start threads to denigrate the south are invariably northerners, or Yankees if you prefer, most of whom come across as rabble rousers.
People owned slaves; people no longer own slaves. There are no living ex-slaves in the USA. There are no living ex-slave owners in the USA. Get the hell over it.
Yeah, it was shameful when all those Negroes dared to vote as if they were white men! The south didn’t want to behave themselves after the war ended.
I didn’t see the OP denigrate the south.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but the reason why people still think the Confederacy was all great was after Reconstruction, during Redemption, the South was able to rewrite its own history. That’s why you got things like, “Birth of a Nation,” which was/is pure propaganda.
The South was shamed during Reconstruction. And at least two black people were set on fire and hung a week until the 1920s. I say it evened out.
Yeah, that’s a big problem; the north is just fixated on the Civil War. You still see them shamelessly flying the flag that the Union Army marched under.
Don’t tell us, tell confederatestates.org to get the hell over it.
I think Gone With the Wind had more cultural influence.