# Neo Confederates and Revisionist Civil War History **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 12, 2010, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821 "2010-04-12T11:32:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Oldeb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ea666f/32.png) [@Oldeb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oldeb)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/41 "2010-04-12T21:30:39Z")
> [@jrodefeld](#): > > **5. All other nations got rid of slavery without a civil war. The policy our government should have taken would be to buy the slaves from the slave owners and release them. This is what Great Britain did and many other nations as well.** You have no concept of a plantation economy, do you? This would have utterly destroyed the economy of every slave-dependant state. There is no way they would have stood for it. The South wasn’t practicing chattel slavery just for kicks. When the British freed the slaves in Jamaica it collapsed the local economy. For the most part they didn’t really care, it was far away and at the time amounted to less than 5% of their economy. The South had no industrial base to switch their economy to. They were decades behind the North and the UK; they had barely experienced the Industrial Revolution prior to Reconstruction. They had no factories and no railroads. They imported everything. Without the plantations there was nothing. There are also other factors that you are ignoring, such as slave uprisings and rebellions that occured in Jamaica that never happened in the US. In 1831, before the British freed the slaves, there was the Baptist War (aka the Christmas Uprising or the Great Jamaican Slave Revolt). It lasted for 10 days and a full fifth of Jamaica’s slaves participated. Not many people died (only 14 whites, 500 slaves) but the property damage was immense, roughly equal to $77,115,372.59 today. The British were also facing constant attacks from Maroons (escaped slave communities) from 1800 on. The lack of money coming in from the plantations meant that it cost them far more to keep slavery than to abolish it. There was never a slave uprising comparable to the Baptist War in the US to make people reconsider the financial cost. There’s also the cost of buying all those slaves from their owners. I don’t think that it was even feasible. The number of British slave owners was small. Not so in the US. And a plantations with 20 or more slaves had more value in the slaves then it did in the land and buildings. You’re asking for not only an enormous financial payment by the North but also for the South to sit by and watch it’s entire economy collapse. Considering they left the Union for less, there is no way it would have ever happened. > [@](#): > > I truly believe the horrors of Jim Crow laws, the lynching of black men and many of the great evils that continued for many decades could have, to a large degree, been avoided had we taken this more sensible route that other nations took. You can’t possibly be serious. You honestly think the root of racism is because some White Southerners weren’t compensated for the freeing of their slaves? Doesn’t this directly contradict your point that Lincoln was racist? He never had any slaves. What about racism to non-blacks? > [@](#): > > The Civil War destroyed the economy of the South the way the Treaty of Versailles destroyed Germany. There is obviously no justification for the way that black people were treated in the South, but just as the Treaty of Versailles allowed the conditions that gave rise to Hitler, the unintended consequences of the Civil War have to be considered. It created a deep seated resentment among many Southerners and directly contributed to a huge uptick in violence towards blacks and racial bigotry that persisted for many decades. So we’re ignoring Reconstruction then? Yeah, it had corruption problems, but it rebuilt the South. It built schools, factories, and railroads. All things the South lacked. If you’re going to compare it like that it was far closer to the rebuilding of Japan after WW2. Prior to the Civil War skilled labor was done almost entirely in the North because there were no educated workers in the South. 25% of whites in the South couldn’t even read. That changed with Reconstruction. Over 18,000 miles of railway were built in the South during Reconstruction. Natural resources were developed and factories were built. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/42 "2010-04-12T21:34:33Z")
Don’t know if this is a hijack question or not, but I’m gonna throw it out there anyways. To those who think the Union was wrong in not letting secession take place, or think Lincoln was wrong in retaliating against the attack on Sumter, or think the South had a legitimate “states rights” grievance about Yankee meddling…what should the North have done? Should they have let the South secede and not raised a finger against them, thereby letting slavery continue on another few decades or more maybe? Should Lincoln have ignored the international clamoring of the abolitionist movement and instead, kowtowed to the South by pledging never to intefere with slavery? Neither one of these alternatives seems…how should I say…very good to me. We can talk about the Constitution all the live-long day, but it’s purely an academic exercise in this discussion unless you think that legal matters supercede moral ones. So what should have been the North’s reaction to the Confederacy’s stance? ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/43 "2010-04-12T21:59:01Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > Perhaps the savviest course for an anti-slavery President at the time would have been to let the seceded states alone, work to ban slavery in all new territories, amend the Constitution to ban slavery entirely after some future date, and advocate a compensated emancipation in the slave states still remaining in the Union. With the political power of the slaveholding faction so much reduced by the absence of the first-seceded states, all these things would have been much more feasible than in the pre-1860 deadlock. Which is pretty much what Lincoln was attempting to do. ---
**Author:** ![jrodefeld](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/59ef9b/32.png) [@jrodefeld](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jrodefeld)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/44 "2010-04-12T22:11:26Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > So is your point that the Confederacy was a noble and worthwhile cause? NO. My point is that the principle of States Rights and even Secession should have been maintained in the American tradition and that slavery could have been ended in a much more peaceful way. The Abolitionist movement was gaining steam and had achieved significant breakthroughs at that time. War is not a solution to anything. We cannot just say the North was all good and the South was all bad. It is much more complicated than that. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/45 "2010-04-12T23:26:00Z")
> [@jrodefeld](#): > > **2. The Civil War was not fought over slavery. It was fought to destroy the original intent of the Constitution and to establish a much more powerful central government in violation of the Founders wishes. It was also fought over economic concerns.** > **5. All other nations got rid of slavery without a civil war. The policy our government should have taken would be to buy the slaves from the slave owners and release them. This is what Great Britain did and many other nations as well.** How do you reconcile these two points of yours? You admit in point 5 that the war was fought over slavery, but deny that it was in point 2. Assuming that buying slaves and freeing them was actually a practical solution and one acceptable to the South, how was the Federal government going to raise the money to buy out essentially the entire economy of the South and then prevent a meltdown by reconstructing the South without establishing a much more powerful central government in violation of (your view of) the Founders wishes? > [@](#): > > My point is that the principle of States Rights and even Secession should have been maintained in the American tradition and that slavery could have been ended in a much more peaceful way. How exactly would this have been accomplished? A powerful central government telling the Southern states that it was going to buy and free all of their slaves certainly wouldn’t be preserving ‘States Rights’ - and the mere fear of being told someday in the indeterminate future that they would have to abandon chattel slavery that led to the South starting a war. > [@](#): > > War is not a solution to anything. It’s actually been a solution to a great many things throughout history. It just didn’t result in the solution the South wanted. Perhaps they should have thought of this before they stated the war. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/46 "2010-04-12T23:30:03Z")
> [@jrodefeld](#): > > NO. My point is that the principle of States Rights and even Secession should have been maintained in the American tradition and that slavery could have been ended in a much more peaceful way. What evidence do you have that the South was amenable to any of these peaceful ways? I’ve seen nothing to suggest they were willing to phase out slavery, ever. They weren’t even willing to acknowlege that it had ethical costs associated with it. They were so steeped in rationalization that for them to even call it a “necessary evil” would have been too much of a concession. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/47 "2010-04-12T23:40:51Z")
The Civil War was about slavery, in the sense that if there had been no slavery there would have been no war. The North and South had other points of difference, but they all went back to slavery one way or another. E.g., tariff policy: The industrializing North wanted a high protective tariff, the agrarian South wanted free trade and cheap imported manufactures. But slavery was the main reason **why** the South was not industrializing, just as the sociocultural legacy of slavery held it back from industrializing until the 1960s. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Baldy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Gary\_Baldy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Baldy)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/48 "2010-04-12T23:44:47Z")
> [@Oldeb](#): > > There are also other factors that you are ignoring, such as slave uprisings and rebellions that occured in Jamaica that never happened in the US. Ummm… I believe there was an incident by Nat Turner that was somewhat memorable. ---
**Author:** ![Oldeb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ea666f/32.png) [@Oldeb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oldeb)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/49 "2010-04-13T00:50:57Z")
> [@Gary\_Baldy](#): > > Ummm… I believe there was an incident by Nat Turner that was somewhat memorable. Not in the same sense that it sparked a look at the economics of slavery. The Baptist War essentially drove home to the British that it was far better to be an industrial power then to keep the plantations going. Nat Turner managed a 2 day killing spree of 56 whites. He got the greater death toll, but all that resulted was an increase in violence towards Blacks and the deaths of over 250 slaves. Had he instead started burning plantations rather than killing people Nat probably would have achieved more. To be extremely cynical, cash flow trumps human lives. I don’t mean to imply that the British only freed slaves because it made economic sense for them to do it, but it certainly was a factor. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/50 "2010-04-13T01:27:44Z")
> [@jrodefeld](#): > > NO. My point is that the principle of States Rights and even Secession should have been maintained in the American tradition . . . . To what “American tradition” do you refer? When New England was nearly bankrupted by the insistence of the South that we go to war with Great Britain in 1812, several states sent representative to the Hartford Convention for the purpose of exploring the practicality of secession. The reaction of the South was that the members of the Hartford Convention were traitors and that any attempt to dissolve the Union would be met with armed suppression of that goal. Forty nine years later, the South decided to change its mind so that it could avoid even discussing abolition, but there was no “American tradition” of secession to which the South subscribed. They simply hypocritically changed their minds when they decided that the gored ox was theirs. > [@jrodefeld](#): > > We cannot just say the North was all good and the South was all bad. It is much more complicated than that. The comment strikes me as the acme of irony, given that your OP strove mightily to say that the South was mostly good while the North was very evil. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/51 "2010-04-13T02:24:56Z")
> [@jrodefeld](#): > > My point is that the principle of States Rights and even Secession should have been maintained . . . Why? I’ve often seen this meme and variations on it repeated but I’ve never seen any good reason given. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/52 "2010-04-13T02:28:25Z")
I think it’s really funny to have libertarians be states-rights apologists. The rights the states were concerned with were keeping slaves and then later preserving segregation. The states did not give a fuck about individual liberties, they wanted to keep the ability to apply state power to _deny_ liberty. If the states rights people had their way we’d have state endorsed religions, religious tests for office, denial of suffrage to non-whites, and infringements on interstate commerce. It’s hard to imagine anyone less libertartian than the states rights crowd. You libertarians are a joke. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/53 "2010-04-13T03:28:38Z")
I despise all forms of secession as treason. This includes Neo-Confederates, Radical Tea-Partiers, Libertarians, Christian Fundamentalists, Vermonters, Texan Nationalists, Lakotah Nationalists, Hawaiian Secessionists, Puerto Rican Secessionists, Alaskan Secessionists, and all others. Indeed I think any group dedicated to some sort of secession should be watched by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. But on the other hand some Confederate apologist arguments are right. The Southern Rebellion was not just or mainly over slavery at the start, but also about states’ rights and all that. But make no mistake even if slavery was not an issue at all in the Civil War I would have supported the Union. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/54 "2010-04-13T03:45:22Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > But on the other hand some Confederate apologist arguments are right. The Southern Rebellion was not just or mainly over slavery at the start, but also about states’ rights and all that. You need (again) to read history, or even just this thread. Without slavery, there was no secession. Any other claim is an apologist exercise that is not supported by any facts. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/55 "2010-04-13T03:46:07Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > You libertarians are a joke. And you are out of line. Knock it off. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/56 "2010-04-13T03:53:00Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > You need (again) to read history, or even just this thread. > > Without slavery, there was no secession. Any other claim is an apologist exercise that is not supported by any facts. To give an example four Upper South states did not secede until after President Lincoln called for Union troops and thus those states opposed an active war against other states. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/57 "2010-04-13T04:09:16Z")
So what? There was a lot of pro-Union sentiment in those states, so it took longer to organize a secessionist movement, but the issue would not even have arisen if the country was not already splitting up–something that only occurred because of slavery. ---
**Author:** ![Oldeb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ea666f/32.png) [@Oldeb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oldeb)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/58 "2010-04-13T04:14:00Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > To give an example four Upper South states did not secede until after President Lincoln called for Union troops and thus those states opposed an active war against other states. But they were totally cool with the attack on Fort Sumter because… ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/59 "2010-04-13T04:35:51Z")
[QUOTE=Curtis LeMay;] The Southern Rebellion was not just or mainly over slavery at the start, but also about states’ rights and all that. [/QUOTE] /yawn. And what again exactly were these states’ rights and all that? Oh yeah, the right to preserve slavery… and all that. > [@Oldeb](#): > > But they were totally cool with the attack on Fort Sumter because… Lincoln made them do it because he was the devil incarnate! Haven’t you been reading this thread? Cripes, with the way Fort Sumter was dressed she was asking to be raped, duh.😉 ---
**Author:** ![jrodefeld](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/59ef9b/32.png) [@jrodefeld](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jrodefeld)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/60 "2010-04-13T08:21:32Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > I think it’s really funny to have libertarians be states-rights apologists. The rights the states were concerned with were keeping slaves and then later preserving segregation. The states did not give a fuck about individual liberties, they wanted to keep the ability to apply state power to _deny_ liberty. If the states rights people had their way we’d have state endorsed religions, religious tests for office, denial of suffrage to non-whites, and infringements on interstate commerce. It’s hard to imagine anyone less libertartian than the states rights crowd. > > You libertarians are a joke. You know, countless times throughout our history States Rights have been invoked in order to PROMOTE the cause of liberty. Yet the only significant use of states rights to suppress liberty was by defenders of slavery. Slavery was on the way out ALREADY! It was only a matter of time. What about the good, pro liberty uses of States Rights? A few examples for the liberals: A state, like California chooses to legalize pot yet the Federal Government interferes and locks up people anyway because it is illegal under federal law. How about the State efforts to legalize Gay marriage? These issues have been stuck in limbo Federally for decades, yet the states are making Progressive steps towards addressing them and the Federal Government interferes! Don’t you understand the Founders reasoning behind states rights? They feared an oppressive authoritarian government which would threaten freedom for all Americans. They believed that free people should enter voluntarily into a contract with a central governing body through the Constitution. They firmly believed that states rights would preserve liberty and give an extra division of powers that would prevent a dictatorship or abusive central government. I do know the modern connotations of States Rights and there are some who would invoke this idea to oppress certain groups. I understand that. But I believe equally, if not much more so, there are those who would use the issue of states rights to promote the cause of liberty. I know there is lingering racism in this country, but I would like to think that we have reached a critical mass in population, even in the South, that would not dare to try to openly practice hate and prejudice against any minority group. Even if a State were to secede, I don’t think that they would re institute slavery. Theres no way. The issue is this. What if we were to start over as a nation and do what we should have done initially, that is, ban slavery and segregation Federally, but adhere to the principles of States Rights and allowed for the possibility of secession. The Federal government would be very small and most government functions would be done at the state level. The only time secession would ever be considered is if the Federal government TRULY became tyrannical and therefore this last option would be considered to PRESERVE liberty for the citizens of that state. This was the intention of a Republic form of government that our Constitution sets up. Most historians acknowledge that even without the Civil War, slavery would not have lasted much longer anyway. The tides were turning against it and the Industrial Revolution soon made slave labor largely irrelevant. What do you think would have been wrong with advocating the abolition of slavery in a manner consistent with the Constitution as the Founders did and as Lysander Spooner did? Obviously, we would have saved 650,000 American lives. It was completely feasible to do things this way. To think otherwise is to lack a real understanding of US history. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821.md?page=4)