I’m from California, which wasn’t a state during the war. Which verb do I use?
(Answer: If you’re an American, you use “won,” regardless of what state you’re from.)
The two statements in bold seem to be a bit contradictory to me…
I understand that but it is related. Being raised as a Southerner, we were taught all about slavery and the Civil War. It was disproportionate to most other history lessons except WWII. It was not only discussed in History class, we also covered it in English class, Social Studies and Civics.
My Boston area daughters go to excellent schools overall but they have barely heard of the Civil War or slavery at all even though my oldest will be in high school next year. I explained the basics to them but they still didn’t get it so I took them to some of the few memorialized sites for slavery in the region. That didn’t go over too well with them once they realized what they were looking at. Almost all of their friends and classmates are the same. It is the opposite of the South. They were never taught much at all about the Civil War or that New England was once a major slave trading hub. It may be a little different when they get to high school here but I doubt it.
My point is that I don’t see that much difference today between regions that made slavery illegal a few decades before another when they all had long histories of it. It was important at the time and was inevitable for the uneven economies to cause the clash but I don’t see that as a declaration of superiority of one group over another. True Abolitionists were a brave and admirable group but they were only a small minority in the North and even most of them would still be considered blatantly racist today.
Yeah, no.
No, it’s not related.
Boston had a thriving slave port in the 1600’s. Dwindling in the 1700’s. Nonexistent in the 1800’s.
As slavery dwindled in the last decade of the 18th century in Massachusetts, many of the instances where it remained, the slaveholders sometimes applied semantics of a name change to indentured servitude to maintain their property. The 1790 federal census, however, listed no slaves. Massachusetts was a center for the abolition movement in the 19th century.
In case it isn’t obvious, the vast majority of Southerners are extremely happy that the Confederacy lost the Civil War and the South is one of the most patriotic regions to the U.S. as a whole today. The South is also doing quite well overall. It is the most populous region of all in the U.S. regions and it is still growing rapidly. It is also doing quite well in the development of many lucrative and sustainable industries. The lower cost of living combined with warm weather and great food is a great draw when you have a mobile population.
California became a state in 1850, tried briefly to secede when the war broke out, fought a bunch of little battles between pro-Unionist and pro-Confederate militias in California, and sent troops east, where California volunteers defended the Angle at Gettysburg during Pickett’s Charge, hoss.
and… ?
Most current day Southerners had nothing to do with slavery even indirectly. It is also the region that the highest percentage of American blacks choose to live in and more migrate back from other regions every day. It is their ancestral homeland as well. I don’t really see the difference between slavery that ended 50, 100 or or 150 years earlier in some areas over others. It was all long-lasting and bad and there is no reason to pin all the blame on the last holdouts. Lots of different areas engaged in it over a very long period of time. We are talking about a small percentage difference when you compare a state like New York and none at all for some of the Northern states like Maryland and Delaware even during the Civil War.
The Civil War itself ended about 160 years ago and there is no one left that witnessed it so every historical factoid is just that at this point. It is not correct to say that the American South was unique in that regard, the North fought the Civil War to save the slaves, the South is generally unfriendly to American blacks today or that the modern day South is treasonous. It is more correct to say that the opposite of all of those statements are true.
and… ?
We are all familiar with how much you love the south.
But the topic of - this - thread was slavery and the civil war.
The topic of this thread is not:
1- The slave trade in Boston in the 1600’s and 1700’s
2- Slavery in Jamaica and Brazil
3- The reformed south of the most recent decade
What am I supposed to say?
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The Confederate states maintained slavery somewhat longer than most, but not all, Northern states.
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They were willing to fight for it because their agrarian economy would collapse if they just waved their hands and declared all of the slaves free at the same time. For example, Mississippi had 430,000 mostly illiterate slaves with no resources of their own at the commencement of the Civil War and that was by far the majority of the population with relatively few owners. That is a massive economic and social problem that would be hard to solve even today. Sure, plantation owners got themselves into that mess but was not an easy system to dissolve without complete chaos including mass starvation. In fact, they couldn’t do it and the ramifications are being felt in the Mississippi even today. On the plus side, it did germinate the Blues and much of Rock N Roll decades later.
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The vast majority of Confederate soldiers didn’t even have any slaves in their family. They weren’t even fighting for the Confederacy in general. Things were a lot more localized then. They were fighting for their homes, their family or their state. Most of them were barely literate and got drafted into a cause that they didn’t understand well and were fighting for the survival of their family or their town. It wasn’t an ideological war for the common soldier and many of them were some of the greatest victims of all.
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The current state of the South is absolutely relevant. It is a vibrant and quickly growing region. It shouldn’t be judged by events that happened over 160 years ago more than anywhere else is. Did you hear about that bad stuff that happened in New York in the 1880’s? They should be ashamed.
No, you don’t get to dismiss it so glibly as a “historical factoid” that ought to be discreetly buried in the past, when you yourself have bragged of benefitting materially from its legacy: or have you forgotten your “Mammy” whom your family adored so much they used as unpaid labour?
Well, we would have treated those human beings like human beings, but it would have been too gosh darn expensive.
Having a mammy or a maid that is black is not uncommon in the south. Certainly not 40 years ago when black people had less job opportunities. I disagree with shagnasaty a lot but I honestly can’t find fault that his family had an African American nanny when he was a child. It was quite common back then.
This is, I think, common knowledge. The claim that they couldn’t “afford” to end slavery. That claim, I think, is one most people have heard.
It doesn’t make it right. We claim we can’t “afford” to swap our society to non petroleum cars. But, if we wind up ruining the planet, people 200 years from now will not honor or accept our protestations that we could not afford to change.
So? They were fighting for the people who did.
No one is blaming the current Southern states for what happened in the 1800’s. The issue at hand, on this thread, and, in general, is that we dislike it when people minimize the horrors of slavery and offer apologetics about how they couldn’t “afford” to stop or that rebel soldiers were just innocent pawns of the rich. They were - some - southerners who choose not to fight or to fight for the north. The helpless pawns claim is not sufficient.
It’s not that simple. Saying it was about slavery is about as facile as saying it was about states’ rights.
Saying it’s about slavery is about as dumb as saying that a short circuit destroyed your house, when in fact it was the raging fire that actually destroyed it. But that short circuit definitely started the fire- that can’t be denied. And the greasy rags near the shorting electrical outlet certainly helped.
Slavery was an issue in US politics since the country’s inception- the Three-Fifths compromise was probably the first evidence of this. And it continued to be an issue- there were periodic congressional dust-ups during the entire first half of the 19th century about adding slave vs. free states- see the Missouri Compromise (added Maine as free, Missouri as slave), the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas/Nebraska Act, and the Dred Scott case. Between 1820 and 1845, states were admitted in pairs- one slave, one free, to keep the balance, and the peace. Eventually however, the greater population of the North started to overwhelm the South in the House, and were also threatening to get an advantage in the Senate as well, with the addition or pending addition of several free states.
This all eventually came to a head in the Civil War, when the South seceded, because they felt like they were ceasing to control their own affairs, and that the North was starting to dictate what they’d do, and to a great extent, threatening to deprive them of their wealth and property (slaves) without due process or compensation. The threat of Federal legislation to change what they saw as their way of life and source of wealth was real- the limitation of slavery in the territories was a major plank of the 1860 Republican platform, and this was seen as a stepping stone to limiting it in the South proper.
Slavery was certainly the short-circuit that started the smoldering fire, but it didn’t burst into flame until 1861, when the South seceded with the intent of regulating its own affairs and making their own decisions about slavery. And the North fought… not in some kind of noble crusade to free all those poor Southern slaves, but rather to quell a rebellion and keep the Union together.
That’s an important distinction that Shagnasty’s Lincoln quote above points out- the war was a result of the secession, not of slavery, and at least from the Northern point of view, was fought to preserve the Union and quash the rebellion, not as a crusade against slavery.
They (the Confederate States and their supporters – not the South as a whole… considering how large the slave population in the South was, it’s very possible that the majority of Southerners at the time would have opposed going to war) also started a war to defend slavery. Having slaves is terrible; going to war for slavery is even worse.
Yes, they had based their economy and much of their society on slavery. This is not a defense, any more than the Nazis’ reliance on Jewish (and other) slave labor for their war industry was a defense.
There was a solution, though – complete societal reconstruction. It was started and then abandoned, largely due to terrorist tactics of white supremacist Southerners.
Yes, they were pawns. No, free people who chose (or were drafted) into a dumb war are not comparable to the actual greatest victims: the slaves who were beaten, raped, tortured, and murdered routinely. That you could even consider them comparable is a sign of a great disconnect in your understanding of the reality of the past. Torture, rape, and murder of slaves was commonplace in Southern society and accepted by most white Southerners. Other terrible forms of mistreatment of black people were commonplace in Southern society, and accepted by most white Southerners, well into the 20th century.
It’s not just “over 160 years ago”. It’s the KKK’s reign of terror, Jim Crow, lynching, segregation, red-lining, sundown towns, extreme biases in the justice system, and many other white supremacist policies and practices that continued well into recent decades. Most of these were present outside of the South, but were overwhelmingly represented in the South, and were supported (by whites) much more in the South.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, with slightly different wording:
You and many other South defenders are still missing the point, I think. It’s not that the South is a terrible place, and Southerners are evil – the South is a great place (as good as any region of the US), and Southerners are fine people (as good as any people in the US). I’m a Southerner and I love the South. But the place and people aren’t perfect. And the major problem, in my mind, is that so many Southern white people (not all, but many or most) refuse to accept the truth of history – that Southern culture and tradition up until recent decades (and even beyond, in some ways) was dominated by white supremacism, and treated black people abominably, through slavery and a century and more beyond. This was bad in other parts of the country but much worse (and supported by many more) in the South. There is good reason for many people to see symbols like the Confederate battle flag, as well knee-jerk defense against criticism of the South, as a defense or whitewashing of this abominable treatment. Not accepting this doesn’t make one evil, but it’s a flaw, and a correctable flaw. Well-meaning people should recognize this flaw and try to correct it.
That’s it. The South isn’t bad, and Southerners aren’t bad. But there’s still a problem here, and it’s correctable.
The following apologetics for slavery are pretty common (but by no means universal) among Southern whites:
-We didn’t do it! Don’t blame us!
-What we did wasn’t really bad! We had a good reason for it!
-Everybody else was doing it too!
-We won’t do it again!
They’re pretty common in elementary schools too, for that matter :).
Your CA History teacher is turning over in her grave. CA became a state in 1850.
That was pretty much my experience as well. And here in Houston, at least, the term “War of Northern Aggression” is used as a joking term.
To expand on my last post – the South should have undergone a “de-Confederization” and “de-white-supremacization” as extensive as the post World War II de-Nazification in Germany. Every contemporary white Southerner at the time should have been made to feel ashamed to have been a part of such barbarity as supporting and fighting for slavery, and a ‘government’ whose basis was white supremacy. Just as a generation of Germans (those alive during and immediately after WWII) felt a great sense of shame and guilt for the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities (to the point that it would have been unthinkable for them to teach their children that the Nazis were anything but immensely evil), a generation of white Southerners should have felt a great sense of shame and guilt for supporting, whether directly or indirectly, slavery and white supremacy, to the point that it would have been unthinkable for them to teach their children that the Confederates, and Southern society during slavery in general, was anything but immensely evil. Just to reiterate – the shame and guilt should not necessarily be felt by all modern descendants of white Southerners, but it should have been felt by those Southern white people who supported (or failed to oppose) slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, segregation, redlining, or other white supremacist policies (which would include anyone alive today who supported these policies, or failed to oppose them, in the past).
It’s obviously too late for this kind of de-Confederization and de-white-supremacization, but it’s not too late for us to recognize that this should have happened, along with recognizing the great barbarities inflicted by Southern society (and supported by most contemporary Southern whites) against black people during slavery, through Jim Crow and segregation, and up until recent decades.