What is it with you Americans and your civil war?
You’re always rattling on about it for some reasons best known you yourselves.
Hell, we’ve had 2 civil wars and a load of European nations have had theirs but you don’t here them and us constantly rabbiting on about them.
Sheesh
We’re special, dag nabbit!
But oddly enough, they didn’t have a problem flogging guns and equipment to the Confederates during the US Civil War- all those Enfield 1853 Rifled Muskets the Confederate Military had came from England via blockade runners.
Admittedly, the rifles were purchased through brokers who then contracted with RSAF Enfield, London Armoury Co, I. Hollis & Sons, Holland & Holland etc for the guns, but it would have been pretty obvious to Her Majesty’s Government that if Mr. Fred Bloggs of Bermuda wished to purchase 1,000 Enfield muskets every month they weren’t being used for sport.
I have to confess my interest in the US Civil War is primarily in the military equipment, but I’m inclined to think that most of the people involved in the war at a “shooting at the other side” level really weren’t all that concerned about Slavery or Cotton Prices or what have you- they were in the army, there was a war on, and the people in the different uniform were The Enemy and needed to be defeated, much like in any other war.
It would have been difficult for Miinesota to ban slavery prior to 1858 or Oregon to ban slavery prior to 1859, given that those were the years that each was admitted as a state and thus acquired the authority (not granted to territories) to regulate that variety of commerce.
Heck, Alaska probably did not ban slavery until 1959.
And quite a lot of war materiel used to wage World War One came from the US, making us money hand over fist feeding (agrguably) a pan-European Civil War, while Woodrow Wilson made empty platitudes about neutrality.
And, IRT England’s indifference to its Civil War VS the US’s obsession with it; this may be because the English exported the issue - the Puritains emmigrating to the Northeast and the Cavaliers to the South in the 17th Century , and letting the cultural divide simmer until it boiled over again in the 19th.
Shit just gets everywhere, I guess.
Really? I was under the impression that the US contributed almost nothing to the War Effort for World War I until well after 1915, and even then the contributions didn’t really ramp up until 1917. British and French soldiers were armed with British and French arms and ammunition, flew British and French planes, and so on- although I do believe a number of US vehicles were contributed for ambulances and so on prior to the US entry into the war.
Sad to say, not all of that armament went to the British or the French. The Winchester Repeating Arms Company made a good bit of money selling rifles to the Turks before America’s entry into the war made it illegal. Turkey was part of the Central Powers, and aligned with Germany.
I’d have to look up the exact figures, but just from a common sense standpoint, you can imagine that the money to be made from selling goods and loaning money to two counties at war is too good to pass up. Once the Brits bottled up the German ports, the US had the Allies as the main customer. But if it had been logistically possible, the US would have split into two investment camps, each backing one side over the other.
I do recall recently reading something Churchill wrote in the 1930’s, saying that if the US had just stayed out that the war would have ended in 1916 when everyone was exhuasted after the Somme and Verdun. But with the US extending so much credit, the Allies pressed on to win what would prove to be a worse peace in 1918 than one which could have been brokered in 1916.
Emphasis added.
Are you trying to imply that it’s possible to be Southern and not like Moon Pies and RC Cola? Well, bless your little heart, that’s just about the most evil thing I’ve ever heard.
Oh, the rest of your post is spot-on, I just couldn’t let this pass.
That’s how you insult someone politely! 
The oath sworn by members of the millitary at the time:
Treason, defined in the Constitution:
It isn’t indifference, it’s just a case of it’s over and it was over many moons ago. One side won the other lost, that’s it, end of story, now let’s have a cuppa tea. 
Incidentally, WTF is a “Moon Pie?”
Thanks, Zoe. No, I hadn’t known that. The daughter of a college friend of mine also shares Washington’s birthday - they’re in very good company!
And thank you, Captain Amazing, for your post. I once came across a reference to U.S. Navy Secretary Gideon Welles’s rebuke to Southern naval officers when they came to resign at the beginning of the Civil War. He would ask if they owed their education, social standing and careers to their states or to the United States, and to which they had sworn an oath before God.
The answer was painfully obvious, even to them.
I remember, it’s that stuff that Wild Bill spat into Brutus’ face in the film The Green Mile
The Turkish Army were also equipped with .38 calibre Smith & Wesson revolvers, too- not the Mauser C96 (despite Lawrence of Arabia’s depiction to the contrary).
Question: if “providing Aid and comfort” to the US’ enemies is “Treason”, doesn’t that mean that- technically- the Red Cross and US Army Medics would be committing treason if they helped a wounded or injured enemy soldier?
(I know that evidently it’s not, but you see what I mean, right?)
I have to bring up Loewen’s book Lies my Teacher Told Me (And, to some extent, his sequel, Lies Across America), controversial as they are. He makes the case that the terminology is from well after the post-war period, and represents an attempt to redefine the conflict after the fact. He quotes documents from the period that make it abundantly clear that the perpetuation of slavery was the stated root cause of the war, and that the principle of States Rights was , far from the issue, was argued by the rebelling states themselves to be the opposite of their stance.
I haven’t studied this period in any detail, and for all I know Loewen himself might have cherry-picked his quotes, but I doubt it. They look pretty damning.
The US, as in the government, contributed almost nothing. But American banks, businesses, and private individuals began loaning money to the Allies, in the form of bond purchases and credits for materiel purchases, from the very beginning of the war.
Of course, the individuals loaning money acquired a vested interest in Allied victory, so that they wouldn’t default on the loans (some did anyway). In the mood of disillusionment following the war, these persons were blamed, to an exaggerated degree, for the eventual American intervention.
Some poepe have been questioning by statements concerning European slavery. Recall, however, that many of the places where slavery was outlawed simply had no slaves or were themselves sources of slave captives. Black slavery was almost unknown because sub-saharan africans were almost unknown. And slavery did not catch on for direct economic reasons, anyway. But to say there was some grand moral movement wholly unknown to historians to abolish slavery beginning in the 1100’s is just plain fiction. It is true that the Catholic and Orthodox churches were increasingly uncomfortable with the practice, and may have pressured morachs to end it, but the nations they succeeded in had few slaves and those were increasingly Christian slaves, rather than “exotic foreigners.” And of course, most people were serfs anyhow.
I guess you win.