Well, it was and it wasn’t. The North didn’t go to war to end slavery, but to preserve the Union. I’m guessing that most of them didn’t give a shit whether slavery stayed or ended. But the South fought to preserve their “rights”, yes, their right to own slaves. As for economics, their economy depended on slave labor.
This is sort of a main point and one that gets a bit glossed over. It is obvious to everyone now and should have been obvious to everyone then that owning another human being is abhorrent.
But throughout human history, for there to be any sort of privileged class (by which I mean people who could have symposia, who could sit around writing books or philosophizing or charting the sky or dissecting frogs) there has had to be, as it were, a “non-privileged” class. Without an upper-class of people who don’t have to wonder every day where their food is coming from, cultural and scientific and societal advancement would be much, much slower.
The Industrial Revolution changed this for the most part – IIRC, the middle class has never been larger or more affluent – but prior to that point, someone had to do all the really mucky jobs. It would have been better all around if they’d hired sharecroppers (ever hear of them? Not slaves, but almost as bad) instead of buying people, but they didn’t.
Imagine this – for most people, cars are a necessity to get back and forth to work. They can take the bus or the subway but it’s a damn hassle living without a car. Cars also play havoc on the atmosphere, are expensive to make and maintain, and encourage American reliance on fossil fuels. Cars aren’t so common in New York, though: everyone drives to work. They’re very common in more spread-out cities, especially with bad transit systems.
But now the people of New York City have decided – you can’t drive a car anymore. It’s bad for so very many reasons. Yes, your entire city structure and economy is based on having a car, but cars are wrong and we get on fine without them. You have to give us all your cars now and we’re not even going to reimburse you for them. You’re horrible people for driving cars in the first place; do you KNOW what that does to the environment? Anyway, it’s the law now.
We didn’t vote for that, say the drivers of cars.
Maybe not, say the people of New York City. But we did, and though you take up more space, there’s more of us than there are of you. Therefore we have more votes.
Wait, say the drivers of the cars. That’s not freaking fair. You aren’t affected by this decision at all, but our entire lives will be turned upside down. Didn’t we have this whole revolution about not being represented? Even if every single person down here doesn’t agree to give up their cars, we don’t get a choice because you decided that we will make this sacrifice.
Did we mention that cars are bad? say the people of NYC.
This is very simplified, but it’s a heck of a lot less simple than “The war was all about slavery”.
You do realize, I hope, that this hijack did not begin with people running in to scream “It was all about slavery!”?
The hijack took off with seenidog claiming that
supported by Oakminster’s statement that
which had not actually been said.
The Flag in question was a battle flag, it was adopted by southerners as a cultural icon for a variety of reasons, some acceptable and some not. I prefer to acknowledge the acceptable reasons and deny the racists anything. The actual flag of the confederacy went through 3 or four changes and a few of them wouldn’t be recognised as anything controversial today. If you don’t believe one of the reasons the US was formed and fought for it’s independence was the perpetuation of slavery, you’re really naive. Southern states joined the revolution in order to protect their interests from British interference. Britain went on to outlaw the slave trade in 1807 and slavery altogether in the 1830s much as the wealthy plantation owners feared they might. The economic benefits of slavery didn’t magically end at the mason-dixon line you know, the entire country reaped it’s rewards and profited handsomely, as did the British and French. The difference was that while slavery was the economic base of the south, other regions were more diversified and new technologies enabled northern factories the luxury of threatening economic upheaval by fiat against their southern suppliers when the time came. To suggest that my subsistance forebears in the hills of east TN, culturally very southern, were somehow more culpable for the evils of slavery than a mill owner in Boston simply by virtue of geography is ludicrous. The war was was about money and power, the moral issues of slavery were window dressing. The federal government was content to leave african americans in bondage and servitude as long as it was profitable to do so, so long as the northern political machines could undertake to secure a future where southern interests were permanently undermined. If those same politicians had truly wished, they could have preserved the union, liberated the slaves and changed the face of the south by spending the money on railroads, factories and buyouts to slaveowners instead of on cannon, guns, ships and uniforms. They didn’t and over a half million men, the great majority good decent people, died on both sides.
You know, I grew up in the North. But one thing I’ve discovered over the years is that while stereotypes are fun to play with, they rarely coincide with reality. There has been a lot wrong with New York State, and with North Carolina, and with any other state you care to name, over the years. And I personally don’t condone the “Rebel Flag” as much of anything I’d care to endorse. But I’d like to think that one can, on the SDMB, actually fight ignorance instead of perpetuating it. So be so kind as to put down your Book of Concord and lutefisk och smorrebrod and try again.
Dear Damn Yankees,
You won the war. We’ll shut up about the war and our past when you get some class and never make another lame ‘brother-cousin’ incest or ‘redneck’ joke to southerners again.
Signed,
The South.
Ask yourself why racist groups like the KKK have adopted that flag as their symbol. I mean really think about it. Why would they think that flag is an appropriate symbol for their cause if not because of what it historically represents?
I understand your frustration (if I strain hard enough), but racist groups like the KKK have just as much right to that blasted thing as anyone else. I can’t imagine that the forefathers of that flag nor most of the people who died under its shadow are all that ideologically different from the overt racists who wave it around today. Members of the KKK are throwbacks from an extinct era. What better symbol could they have than one from the days when men used corn cobs to wipe their asses with? It testifies to their collective mindset.
Why can’t Southerners who are proud of their heritage simply cleave to these noncontroversial flags and leave the battle flag to the KKK? Why protest that the KKK has stolen a flag that really wasn’t all historically significant anyway? This is what I don’t understand.
Cite for this assertion? I assure you that I don’t look at the US with rose-colored glasses when it comes to slavery; the Union was dirty in that area as well. But as far as I know the US was not formed with the explicit purpose of keeping black people under the ruling establishment’s thumb.
No one is saying that. But to say that slavery wasn’t important to the Southern economy is just as ignorant as saying that Southerners were inherently evil. It’s a basic historical fact: slavery was more common in and imporant to the Southern agrarian economy than it was in the industrial North. It was so important that Southern states were willing to break from the country and create their own flag in order to preserve it. Now why this historical fact should be so offensive to you is beyond my comprehension.
Money and power that came from slavery. Painting this as only about money and power, without addressing where these things were coming from, is disingenuous.
I agree that the North was not necessarily more moral and benevolent than the South, just because it happened to be fighting on the “right” side. But I’m not about to pretend that slavery was just “window dressing”, either.
It’s too late to deny the racists anything. You already let the racists take ownership of the battle flag when you sat by and let them use it without protest. You let them drag it through a sewer, and then get upset when people complain about the stench it raises when it’s brough into the room.
Yes indeed, the Confederate States seceded for economic reasons–for "$3,000,000,000 of [their] property", which they called “the greatest material interest of the world”.
Whereas the Ku Klux Klan believes that “that the negro is not equal to the white man” and that “all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights”.
See, the causes of the Confederacy and of the KKK are completely different. I can’t imagine why people are always getting them mixed up.
I personally was born after the civil rights movement. I assure you that I did no such thing. Indeed, I’m not right now… which is why I said fuck the KKK. I can accept that people can get upset about it, but what I cannot accept is people unwilling to take a nuanced view about a symbol and see it within other contexts as well. The cross doesn’t mean just one thing, neither do the US flag, the Iron Cross, the Star of David or any of hundreds of other symbols. There seems to be a very visceral need on the part of some people to divorce the stars and bars from any and all contexts other than as the symbol of the worst things it’s ever been adopted to mean. I can understand it to a point, but it saddens me and I feel the need to defend some aspects of it’s use.
I would submit that the vast majority of men in blue who fought against that flag had personal attitudes not so different from the KKK protestors of today either, as you alluded they too were products of their times. The US as a whole was a pretty virulently racist place. As to why not leave the battle flag to the KKK and adopt another southern flag, symbols are only as powerful as they are identifiable, very early on the stars and bars was used in confederate cemetaries… instead of the national flag or regimental or state flags. It’s a useful symbol. As for slavery’s role in the US revolution, John Adams in 1774 promised southern leaders support for their ‘right’ to maintain slavery to cement their co-operation. They were concerned you see because two years earlier there was a ruling by a british judge that declared that slavery could not exist under common law and that freed some 15,000 slaves living within England. (Sommersett v. Stueart) They could see the writing on the wall and thought the best strategy to preserve their priviledge would be independence and a new country with a very weak central government. I’m not suggesting that slavery wasn’t important to the south, I’m saying it was important to the entire nation… but Vital to the south. I very much liked Little Plastic Ninja’s “Car” analogy… slavery was morally corrupt… abhorrent and should have been done away with immediately… BUT, the reality was that there was no willingness to PAY for the changes that would be necessary to transform the southern economy by the north (outside of a staggeringly bloody and expensive war I suppose) which also prospered from the practice. The fear (and a real fear) was that when it was expedient to do so the north would use it’s voting power to make slavery illegal by fiat, give little or no compensation to slave owners and not preceed this upheaval with any useful investment in southern industrialization. This is what in fact happened, as a result the South (despite even the huge progress made in the last 30 years) is still the poorest, most uneducated and undeveloped portion of the US. It was all about money and power… the fact that slavery fueled southern wealth by growing cotton is as undeniable as the fact that alot of northern wealth was made by buying that cheap cotton and making shirts… without alot of concern about who died or was oppressed in the process. They both had a vested interest in preserving slavery, and until the bitter end fought to preserve it.
I’d be offended if you understood my post and responded in kind to it. Since ya didn’t, I’ll chalk it up to polycarp’s ramblings again. Blah blah blah.
I can only assume you are referring to the legality of marriage between first cousins? If so my state allows it along with such progressive states as California, New York and Massachusetts… none of which are… you know… Southern. Southern states prohibiting marriage between first cousins include Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. So then… your point would be?
The idea of illegalizing marriage between first cousins in the first place strikes me as bizarre.
That said, you want a symbol of southern heritage, find a symbol of southern heritage. The Stars and Bars is a symbol of southern battle ships. Southern treason - treason committed (as this thread has made more and more clear to me) in order to protect something abhorent.
I could believe the arguments about “celebrating southern heritage” if they hadn’t chosen a symbol of the absolute worst moment in southern history and claimed it as their “heritage”.
Exactly. It’s like a German wearing a swastika and claiming it only stands for his “German heritage”; the fact that he choose that part of his “heritage” tells me a lot about him, and it’s not like Germany has nothing else.
Is the South really so culturally impoverished that they can’t find a better symbol ?
That’s really nice, but the thing is, if you fly that flag, I don’t know if you’re defying the racists, or showing support for the racists. A symbol is only as useful as the message it communicates, and that flag has two very distinct, very specific meanings: one of them is Southern pride, which is universal, but also exceedingly common is White Supremacy. You can’t fly that flag and have it only convey the one meaning just by wishing it so. For the vast majority of the people on this planet, and for a good number of your fellow Southerners, that flag means racism. Get rid of it, already. It’s a symbol, not the thing itself. Losing the Confederate flag doesn’t mean you have to give up your pride. You complained about Southern stereotypes, but the longer you fight over this tainted symbol, the longer you keep those stereotypes alive.
Of course the Confederates fought for slavery. For some reason young men will fight for just about anything if you tell them their country needs them and their way of life needs to be protected and their homes are in danger. They see their brothers and their friends going and something within them makes them go. They will justify the cause in their minds no matter what it is. Someone in authority tells them it is the heroic thing to do.
And of course there is still bigotry in the South. It’s part of our heritage. My mother thinks she’s not prejudiced, but I can see little traces in the way she says things. And I suspect that a younger generation can find some elements in the way I say things. Maybe my quoting MLK Jr. is somehow a giveaway to them. I don’t know.
I see primitive gnawing bigotry surfacing here at SDMB. I suspect only some of them are Southerners.
That’s because slavery is part of our heritage if we are Americans at all. It doesn’t matter if you flew in from Finland yesterday. Welcome to the United States – a country built by slaves. That includes you, Yanks. New York, for example, had slaves more than three times longer than Tennessee did. Some of you would like to forget about the Seventeeth and Eighteenth Centuries and just go straight to the Old South.
and
Some slaves fled South to Georgia which for a while had a law to protect blacks from cruel treatment and from being hired out.
I’ve never asked to be let off the hook. But I am responsible only for my own actions. I like being a Southerner, but that has to do with the mid-Twentieth Century and some pleasant things – not the ugliness that some associate with the same time period and earlier.
I grew up with an “Atticus” for a father and I have nothing about that part of my childhood to regret.
No, actually I find the more appropriate analogy to be the Iron Cross. The Iron Cross was used before the 3rd reich and wasn’t a political symbol, it was a military one. The Stars and Bars was a military flag, not the flag of the confederate state. I have no objection to germans displaying the iron cross as a proud symbol of their military history and culture… but it has also been co-opted by racists. The south is anything But culturally impoverished, the fact that southern culture is so widely known of and identifiable as well has having long historical roots should suggest that… but what symbol would you recommend? I have a suspicion that if the south were to universally adopt a flag with a picture of the Boll Weevil on it tomorrow as it’s cultural icon, about a week later there would be those who would say it stands for oppressive racism simply by virtue of the fact that it is Southern. If southern automatically equals racist to some people then I’d rather just do without the effort and use the symbol we already have.
The swastika was used long, long before the Nazis, and not just by the Germans. Now, it means “Nazi” to just about everyone.
It doesn’t really matter if was actually a Union symbol at this point; now, it’s a symbol for the Confederacy, slavery, and racism in general.