# 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:** 6
**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 13, 2010, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/101 "2010-04-13T22:24:07Z")
> [@jrodefeld](#): > > Yet the only significant use of states rights to suppress liberty was by defenders of slavery. On the contrary, states suppressed individual rights all the time, rights that would have been protected had the Bill of Rights been applied to them. Massachusetts and Connecticut had state religions into the 19th century. The [Georgia Yazoo land fraud](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazoo_land_scandal) was instigated by the Georgian government. I’m sure there are many more examples. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/102 "2010-04-13T23:50:05Z")
Interesting how this is popping up. Nice article in The Atlantic about how the confederacy was all about slavery. [The Ghost of Bobby Lee - The Atlantic](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/04/the-ghost-of-bobby-lee/38813/) I like some of the quotes. > [@](#): > > Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin > [@](#): > > Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth ---
**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, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/103 "2010-04-13T23:59:55Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > 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. > [@Dissonance](#): > > /yawn. And what again exactly were these states’ rights and all that? Oh yeah, the right to preserve slavery… and all that. Tariffs cough…cough… Also at the _start_ of the Southern Rebellion the big question was not whether slavery would be abolished but whether it would be allowed in the territories. > [@jrodefeld](#): > > Why don’t you explain yourself more clearly on WHY you have such animosity towards states rights? Especially since you acknowledge that the Civil War was not fought over slavery. Because the US federal government was not tyrannical. Indeed it promised to allow the South very much freedom. However the Southern states behaved illogically out of a fit of passion and needed to be crushed. > [@Marley23](#): > > Slavery might have become economically unnecessary within a few decades after the 1860s, but cultural racism would have kept it alive long after that. After that I think you would have seen something like apartheid-era South Africa, not a ban on slavery and “maximum liberty” and states’ rights. Actually that’s what the sharecropping system in the South was like. > [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > Would this include the previous war of secession, also known as the War of Independence? It was not by a core part of the nation state but rather by a colony but I also think without hindsight had I lived in the 1770s I may have been a Tory at least in the start. > [@villa](#): > > Can you please explain to me how an inanimate entity like a “state” has rights? Individuals have rights. The huge advance of the concept of personal rights was that there were things the government could not do to you - and if the government did, it would be morally wrong. Rights are essentially a moral concept, and that gives them an important standing. > > Cloaking the rules of the government game in the language of rights is damaging, because it implies some kind of moral justification for the idea that powers are split between the federal and state government. There isn’t. There are reasons why certain allocations are good and bad, and they might touch on morality, but they aren’t moral themselves in the way that “ **Curtis LeMay** may not have is right to free speech infringed upon by the government” is a morality based statement. > > Whether the state or the federal government determined whether a fugitive slave should be returned to his or her owner isn’t about morality in that sense. It’s the equivalent of whether the linesman or the referee should call offside decisions. > > By even talking of states’ rights as if they exist you are pandering to the secessionists. Am I saying slavery wasn’t a reason for the Southern Rebellion? No! However slavery was not the only reason either and considering this board is dedicated to a jihad against ignorance you ought to see that the reasons for the rebellion was more complex than just “slavery”. The US citizenship test recognizes this by having the answers to the question on “What were the causes of the Civil War” be “Economic reasons and slavery” (or something to that effect). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/104 "2010-04-14T00:02:00Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Interesting how this is popping up. Nice article in The Atlantic about how the confederacy was all about slavery. [The Ghost of Bobby Lee - The Atlantic](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/04/the-ghost-of-bobby-lee/38813/) > > I like some of the quotes. The idea that slavery was justified because it was necessary to support the South’s genteel, aristocratic civilization even had a name at the time: [The Mudsill Theory.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudsill_theory) (And it has survived in various forms, less baldly stated, to this day.) ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/105 "2010-04-14T00:04:49Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > What a remarkable individual you are, then, to develop a completely independent moral system. And how coincidental that it’s similar enough to general societal morality that you can successfully function in the society. Empathy is an evolved, biological response. It doesn’t have to be taught, and all “morality” derives from this shared biological characteristic. We are a social animal by our biology. We are an empathic animal by our biology. Our biology is all we need to be able to tell if something we’re doing to another person is wrong. ---
**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 14, 2010, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/106 "2010-04-14T00:05:25Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > The idea that slavery was justified because it was necessary to support the South’s genteel, aristocratic civilization even had a name at the time: [The Mudsill Theory.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudsill_theory) (And it has survived in various forms, less baldly stated, to this day.) Methinks that’s the theory DiLorenzo uses to justify the Rebellion? ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/107 "2010-04-14T00:09:17Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > It was not by a core part of the nation state but rather by a colony but I also think without hindsight had I lived in the 1770s I may have been a Tory at least in the start. I take it then that the Founding Father’s vile treason against the British Crown does not, today, earn your ire? That even then, you feel that you could have been convinced towards the cause of perfidious America? That seems like an oddity, especially given your vehemence with the notion that even if slavery were not an issue, you would have sided with the later victors. You go into quite considerable detail about how much you despise secessionists - what’s the difference between those treasons and that which gave birth to the United States? Why don’t you despise those treasonous dogs? ---
**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 14, 2010, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/108 "2010-04-14T00:11:43Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > I take it then that the Founding Father’s vile treason against the British Crown does not, today, earn your ire? That even then, you feel that you could have been convinced towards the cause of perfidious America? That seems like an oddity, especially given your vehemence with the notion that even if slavery were not an issue, you would have sided with the later victors. You go into quite considerable detail about how much you despise secessionists - what’s the difference between those treasons and that which gave birth to the United States? Why don’t you despise those treasonous dogs? As I’ve said the Americas were a colony, not a component part of the nation unlike the Southern states were. A better analogy would be the independence of the African and Asian nations from the colonial powers. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/109 "2010-04-14T00:14:15Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > As I’ve said the Americas were a colony, not a component part of the nation unlike the Southern states were. A better analogy would be the independence of the African and Asian nations from the colonial powers. Why does that matter, though? Why does it stop treason from being such a despicable action? ---
**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 14, 2010, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/110 "2010-04-14T00:14:32Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > It does matter. If there’s a culture where everybody’s allowed and encouraged to beat and sexually molest their children, how can somebody be culpable for doing it, and how can somebody be culpable for standing by and watching it be done? Slaveowners were not in a bubble. They were well aware of the arguments against slavery, the appeals to morality and human decency, the evidence of harm. Frederick Douglas was writing and talking about the evils of the system just as eloquently as any white man, so clutching to the “but they’re childlike animals!” defense was untenable. Furthermore, they had evidence of suffering right before their eyes. Slaves weren’t _laughing_ as they were whipped, after all. People don’t run away if they are happy in their station. So for them to be ignorant about the ethics of what they were doing is only because they were _willfully_ so. They chose not to listen to the opposing view, so if they were ignorant, it’s not because they came by it honestly. This pattern of willful blindness and ignorance still exists today for Christ’s sake (and sadly, seems to be extra pervasive in the south). Is it unreasonable to be angry when someone continues in the year 2010 to insist that Iraq has WMD’s, that evolution is false, or that UHC is pinko socialism that will lead to death panels? That vaccines cause autism, that Obama is the anti-Christ, that gays are in a handbasket to hell, or that dog fighting is a just good, clean Christian fun? If we can get frustrated when someone spouts this crap, surely we can spare some for those who went to _war_ to defend slavery. > [@](#): > > If you’re growing up in the antebellum South, if you see slaves all the time, if all the leaders and respected people of your community have slaves, if the church you go to praises slavery as a moral good; in other words, if everything in your society tells you that slavery is right and natural, can you really be blamed for thinking it is? Do you really expect people to reject their societies like that? Owning slaves and supporting the Confederacy were not prerequisitves for living in the south. I’m sure there were many whites who had philosophical issues with slavery that were born and raised in the south. Some probably stayed and some probably moved. Doing the right thing isn’t always easy. We know this. Why you think this matters, though, still eludes me. It’s as if you think I’m calling these people blue-eyed devils. I’m not. A lot of Nazi officers were probably nice guys too. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some who actively chose not to participate with the death camp killing, and elected to be on the frontlines of battle instead. But do you see anyone pointing to their existence as if to deflect blame and criticism everytime WWII is discussed? ---
**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 14, 2010, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/111 "2010-04-14T00:21:47Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > Why does that matter, though? Why does it stop treason from being such a despicable action? Because colonials are not full citizens of the core state. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/112 "2010-04-14T00:34:16Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Because colonials are not full citizens of the core state. Again, so? That would imply that the despicable nature of the act isn’t in the actual betrayal, but rather in some minor disruption of legalese. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/113 "2010-04-14T00:43:12Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Actually that’s what the sharecropping system in the South was like. I’m saying that system would have come about later, been worse, and taken longer to go away because there would not have been pressure from the federal government. There would not have been a 14th or 15th amendment, either. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/114 "2010-04-14T00:43:38Z")
When the Scots and the Irish lost their political independence, they soon lost their socioeconomic independence as well; most of them were reduced to the status of exploited tenant farmers for British absentee landlords. The Americans rebelled against the British crown because they feared the British program of bringing them under tighter imperial control after the French and Indian War would end the same way for them. And all the European colonial empires were essentially about economic exploitation, and the rebellions against them were rebellions against economic exploitation. But the antebellum South was not threatened with any such thing by the North, and certainly not by abolitionism. **After** the War, Northern elites **did** economically colonize the South and reduce its old landed gentry, the “Bourbon Aristocracy” (so called because, like the royal Bourbons restored to the French throne after Napoleon, they “learned nothing and forgot nothing”), to their regional agents and managers; but that would never have happened, if those arrogant aristos had not led their region by the nose into an unjust and hopeless war to preserve their own power. They got better than they deserved. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/115 "2010-04-14T00:52:53Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Empathy is an evolved, biological response. It doesn’t have to be taught, and all “morality” derives from this shared biological characteristic. We are a social animal by our biology. We are an empathic animal by our biology. Our biology is all we need to be able to tell if something we’re doing to another person is wrong. I’ll admit that I’m no biologist, but the list of atrocities and cruelties, both large and small, that people have, throughout history, inflicted on each other quite cheerfully and even self-righteously and without any apparent remorse seems to argue against your theory of some sort of innate universal empathetic moral sense. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/116 "2010-04-14T00:57:19Z")
> [@jrodefeld](#): > > Okay. I didn’t mean any offense, though you clearly reacted that way. How about this: > > **If you would like to post a reaction or rebuttal of my views I would be happy to engage in discussion with all of you visiting this forum.** > > Better? “What are your thoughts on the subject?” or “What do you think?” would be fine, too. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/117 "2010-04-14T01:45:56Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Tariffs cough…cough… I would choke, too, if I tried to pretend that the arguments over tariffs were not directly tied to the differences in economy between the industrial North and the agrarian South. Had the South invested as much in foundries and manufacturing as it did not raising a crop that needed to be exported to make a profit, then the attitude of the South toward tariffs woulod have more nearly resembled that of the North. (This, by the way, is a point already established in this thread, so you might want to take the time to read what others have posted before throwing out old, discredited _apologia_ of secessionists.) > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Also at the _start_ of the Southern Rebellion the big question was not whether slavery would be abolished but whether it would be allowed in the territories. Which still boils down to the issue of slavery being the primary cause for conflict. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/118 "2010-04-14T02:03:08Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Also at the _start_ of the Southern Rebellion the big question was not whether slavery would be abolished but whether it would be allowed in the territories. And why did the Southern states **care** whether slavery would be allowed in the territories? Because the territories obviously would become states eventually, and the Southern ruling elite’s number-one political priority was to keep slave states in at least equal number with free states, thus keeping the Senate in balance between the two and forestalling any chance of federal legislation against slavery **in the South.** The South pushed for the Mexican-American War because they hoped to make new slave states out of the West – their disappointment in this regard was one of the precipitating factors of the Civil War. The same thinking was behind the [Knights of the Golden Circle’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_golden_circle) plan to make slave states out of territories in Central America and the Caribbean. All historians agree on all of this, with no dissent or revisionism whatsoever; it’s standard high-school-U.S.-history-class material. ---
**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 14, 2010, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/119 "2010-04-14T02:07:13Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And why did the Southern states **care** whether slavery would be allowed in the territories? Because the territories obviously would become states eventually, and the Southern ruling elite’s number-one political priority was to keep slave states in at least equal number with free states, thus keeping the Senate in balance between the two and forestalling any chance of federal legislation against slavery **in the South.** The South pushed for the Mexican-American War because they hoped to make new slave states out of the West – their disappointment in this regard was one of the precipitating factors of the Civil War. The same thinking was behind the [Knights of the Golden Circle’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_golden_circle) plan to make slave states out of territories in Central America and the Caribbean. All historians agree on all of this, with no dissent or revisionism whatsoever; it’s standard high-school-U.S.-history-class material. Which is true. In 1860 had the South not seceded there would have been no abolition for a while. What most Northerners wanted was the Free states gradually outnumbering the slave ones and thus for abolition to happen. However when the South seceded the North until in the middle of the war conducted the war in the name of the Union rather than to abolish slavery and the South to in the end even began recruiting slaves as soldiers. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2010, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821/120 "2010-04-14T02:11:49Z")
Regardless of whether or not the South seceded, Slavery was already becoming economically unviable (cotton could be obtained cheaper from India) and would have had to go in reasonably short order anyway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neo-confederates-and-revisionist-civil-war-history/535821.md?page=7)