The reason that 1% of the history is so prominent is because of the very many people who pretend that the war was not about slavery and that the secession was predicated on states’ rights. In reality, as shown time and time again, it was really about one particular presumed right: that of maintaining slavery. The southern states who decided to fight against civil rights and then added the battle flag/naval jack to their flags. That proves that the flag represented subjugation of Blacks. It’s dishonest to say that the flag was not representative of that when that flag originated, when it was used over the years following the Civil War, during the Civil Rights era, or even now.
I grew up in the South and was inculcated in the fake history of the South, the pretended niceties of what the revisionists say the ante-bellum South was like. But I learned the truth of the matter over the years and am thankful for that. Unlike almost any other symbol, there’s no ambiguity in what the Confederate flag is about.
By “I am thankful for that,” I mean that I am thankful for learning the truth of the South’s history, not that I’m thankful for what the South was really like back in the days of slavery.
You may not think it matters whether people know who was wrong and “more wrong”, but I disagree. When telling future generations about the Civil War, it’s important that they know that the North’s victory was a good thing. If the South had won, I probably would be in somebody’s kitchen making biscuits right now instead of posting to this thread. Or a lot worse.
That’s how I look at it. Nothing you can say will convince me that the North and South had equally ignoble motivations for warring with each other, if only for the teensy weensy fact that the North did not sacrifice any blood just to keep blacks in chains.
Instead of comparing the two to Hitler and Stalin, I compare them to Godzilla and Mothra. More apt analogy and less Godwinish, too.
I don’t think you can logically conclude you would be “making biscuits” unless they were for yourself, your guests or your family. There’s no way to know for sure, but I don’t think that you can say with any sort of certainty that slavery would still exist today had the southern states succeeded in preserving their secession. Mechanization that accompanied the industrial revolution would have made keeping a large numbers of slaves unprofitable. Add to that societal forces pushing for reform and slavery may have been amended out of the CSA constitution as well (assuming the remaining US states would have passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the US Constitution). It’s like saying that if the US had not won in the revolutionary war of 1776, we’d all be singing “God Save the Queen.” You cannot shift one facet of the past yet expect events from that point forward to remain static. But let me be clear, I am no confederate apologist, nor do I go around waiving a rebel flag. As I have mentioned, I find both repugnant. What I do see however is many a non-southerner projecting America’s centuries of racism and racial inequality on one region of the country. That’s dishonest.
it’s done by casting “good” and “bad” sides; even if done on a relativistic continuum. the tendency is then to associate all the bad with the “bad” side and thereby absolve the “good” side.
I don’t think slavery would still be in existence, but I do believe that its cessation would have been significantly delayed, thereby delaying the whole Civil Rights movement and thus making it more difficult for black people (and perhaps other minorities) to be where they are today. The CW was the impetus for a lot of change that up until then was just simmering in the background. When I made the biscuit reference, it wasn’t to suggest that I’d be a slave; but I very well might be somebody’s maid or nanny. Not an educated professional. But of course we don’t know what would have happened for sure. In some sick twist of fate, I might be president of the Confederacy ( :eek: ) for all I know.
As it happened, the CW forced the South to put a halt to slavery without waiting for their permission. Had slavery been allowed to naturally die off due to market pressures or changing attitudes it probably would have been a long time before blacks would have been allowed to truly be free. I can’t imagine the South fighting such a bloody war to keep its slaves, winning it, and then saying, “Okay yall, its time for freedom for everybody!” The natural tides of change were clearly a long time in coming because otherwise the South would not have reacted like it did by seceeding. That’s a major move to make over something that was supposedly on its way out the door.
I could easily see the Confederates becoming something like South Africa, practicing apartheid well into the modern age.
I’m Southern myself and I clearly recognize that the South had no monopoly on racism. But that doesn’t make me look at both sides of the war with equal ambivalence. I think a lot of white Southerners, by being so defensive when their region is called out for its past sins (which happens a bit too much, admittedly…the country as a whole sucked and all the blame shouldn’t be shunted to the South), try too hard to convince people that there were no differences between the North and the South when it came to race relations. Such false equivalence is grating to me in the same way that the “Oh yeah, but the Democrats/Republicans do it too!” argument is. All one has to do is look at a history book and find out where Jim Crow took place and see why that argument isn’t very effective.
And when that false equivalence is employed with the CW its even more grating, because the unspoken assumption is that the outcome would have been just as good had the South won and North lost. I would hope everyone would agree that this is not true. But perhaps we don’t have that consensus.
Really, as long as no one is trying to portray the North as some enlightened pillar of love-peace-and-harmony (which they haven’t in this thread), I don’t see why it is so offensive to suggest that the South was in the wrong here. That’s all I’ve been saying. I’ve never likened them to Hitler or called them blue-eyed devils. I’m just saying I’m glad they lost. And I’m not afraid to say that I’m really glad they lost, either.
I think the problem here, at least in my opinion is the lack of historical honesty. Your post kinda of illustrates that. Sure it’s likely that if the South had succeeded, slavery would have ended, sooner or later. That doesn’t mean that segregation would’ve ended. That doesn’t mean that YWTF’s family and perhaps herself wouldn’t still be ‘mandated’ to work as a servant class, as they did after they were freed from slavery.
Remember it wasn’t until the mid-sixties even in the ‘united’ states in which African-Americans were really protected and given the rights that they should had after the Civil War, and forty years later this country still has problems. most of that burden lies with the South. Note, that doesn’t mean the North was without problems, but c’mon…
I don’t know what’s in your mind and maybe you can fill me in, but I don’t see how African-Americans wouldn’t still be treated as second class citizens in a South that had succeeded and managed to remain independent from the remainder of the United States.
Assuming you’re talking about me, how can you suggest that I’ve done that when repeatedly I’ve stressed that the North was no saint and shouldn’t be painted as such? My posts runneth over with disclaimers about the North’s own sordiness (for Christsakes, the words are in quotes for a reason), but it’s like you won’t be satisfied until everybody agrees with you that both sides were equally bad, equally wrong, and equally racist.
So the logic here is essentially, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”?
Interesting idea. It would be fun to start applying that to other conflicts. “The U.S. has supported corrupt governments in the Middle East! Middle Easterners have committed acts of terrorism against us! Let’s not get bogged down in who is worse than who; let’s just remember this as a dark time in the history of the United States and Osama bin Laden.”
I think it is very appropriate for southerners to remind people of the overall racial climate in the north and the south at the time, lest the newcomer to history think that all of the racism and racial oppression occurred in Dixie.
I was simply refuting what I perceived to be an assumption on you with the face’s part that had the south won, slavery would exist today. I was not dreaming of a “if the south would have won we’d have had it made” scenario.
No. The point here is that when one side is demonized for a trait shared (though perhaps to a lesser degree) with it’s opponent, it’s too easy to forget that the opponent had the shared trait. By casting the north circa 1861 as “good” even if done so relativistic, you tread dangerously close to absolution for one side of a sin shared by both. Applied to your modern day example, the US shouldn’t use the sins of Osama to absolve it of sins it has committed in the past.
For the record, you with the face, I am not commenting directly on you, clearly you are aware of the north’s sins and don’t seek to absolve them by demonizing the south, but that’s not to say others who pit the same “good/bad” dichotomy share your insight.