Well being a native Georgian I’d have to say, “the Union.” I mean, if we are talking about “me” the person typing these words. If we are talking about some mythical me born in 1830, I have NO idea.
The South was flat out WRONG on the issue of slavery, it was in fact EVIL, but it doesn’t bother me that some of my ancestors may have supported it wholeheartedly. Times really do change, and people with them. I also have an ancestor who was paid to be a guard on the Trail of Tears. A lovely legacy, but I don’t feel any burden from it, because I’m not him. This clinging to a damaged, romanticized past that some Southerners do is just plain stupid.
Little known fact. Sherman was one of the founders of Louisiana State University (LSU) before the Civil War. I almost threw up when I found that out. I am of almost pure Southern lineage even though I live in Massachusetts. I come from a very long line of slaveowners starting at Jamestown up through the Civil War and don’t lose much sleep over it. One of my paternal grandfathers got killed by one of his slaves. That will teach you to take better care of your stuff. One of my maternal grandfathers (William Henry James) was one of the last living Confederate War soldiers and profiled in Life magazine in 1949.
As intellectual as I am, I am not afraid to admit that I am a Southern apologist and yankees make me twitchy even though my daughters technically are yankees. Put me down for a gray uniform. The instinct to protect the homeland is a strong one. Most of the time that homelands includes the USA as a whole.
My ancestors were all in the South. I come from a very long line of rural, Southern white trash, but feel no affinity for the worst parts of that heritage, and have no romantic view of the antebellum south. The South was on the wrong side, pure and simple, and I would have been proud to march with Sherman. He did it the right way.
the only reason that became an issue was due to the desire of the Southern states to retain slavery. It was absolutely the defining issue of the time.
Jesus, we have been over this. The states that seceded actually SAID slavery was the reason they were seceding.
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Proclamation heightened the racial issue by setting fire to the embers, as it were, of Southerners’ fears of slave rebellion (which weren’t totally unfounded).
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They were also totally justified. Slaves had the inherent right to rise up and overthrown their oppressors with violence.
Yet somehow, devastatingly accurate. Seeing as how slaves in the south met the dictionary definition and all.
Y’know it is one thing to talk about mitigating factors when discussing, say, the Egyptian Mamelukes, where a period as a slave soldier often was a necessary first step to actually moving into the propertied political class.
But southern chattel slavery, while it might beat sugar plantation slavery in Brazil, really isn’t an institution that lends itself to a light dismissal as too strong of a term.
It is exactly what I said. You are a poet. Use your imagination. He was one of the people that viewed his slaves as pure property and that view caused his own death. There is something literary in there somewhere.
I have posted in other threads about slavery being considered a Southern institution. I live in New England now which was slavery importation central in Boston, Newport, RI and other ports but good luck finding much reference to that around here.
I seriously hope that people who say that slavery is a “strong term” for what went on in the south are just really ignorant about chattel slavery and not attempting to justify its existence. 'Cause damn, people.
The Civil War was about the right of a group of (mostly) white people to own, sell, rape, kill, and traffic in a group of (mostly) black people. That’s what they wanted the right to do. That’s why they went to war, when they felt their right to own, sell, rape, kill, and traffic in (mostly) black people was threatened.
No, the South had pure slaves plain and simple. Where the ideological conflict gets Southerners in a tizzy is that most Southerners didn’t own slaves and had little connection to the institution. Furthermore, most of the importation was done through the North via African kidnappers and traders to sell in the South where slaves were necessary for agricultural needs. There was black slavery in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and all or the original colonies. Good luck finding much awareness of that as well. Those states just ended it earlier because they weren’t needed for agricultural purposes and shifted over to new models like white slavery in indentured servitude. None of the Eastern states are free and clear of that legacy. Southerners get tired of hearing about it because it is the most integrated part of the U.S. in black/white terms today which I think is the goal.
Southerners like you are going to continue hearing it because right here, in this thread, you are shrugging off slavery and stating your support for the CSA. You can’t have it both ways. It’s like a German complaining that the world sees them as Nazis while being a member of a Neo-Nazi group.
You know why the north isn’t as associated with slavery? Because the north didn’t go to war when they felt their right to own, sell, rape, kill, and traffic in (mostly) black people was threatened. And today, most people look at the Confederacy and say, “Hey, that’s gross. No way I support that.” And yet, there are the southerners with their “South will rise again” slogans and their Confederate flags and your answer to this poll.
So, spare me the tears. You want to embrace the heritage of the CSA, you got it. I’m not forcing you to embrace it, but once you do, you’re stuck with the ugly stuff.
White Southerners who don’t want to admit the reality of their history get tired of hearing about it, you mean. Any region in history can have some dirt flung on it, but the fact remains that no slaves were coming in to the North from Africa by the time the Civil War came around. Northerners were not morally pristine, but on the matter of slavery they had the high ground when the abolitionists were gearing up.
It is a lot more simple than that. I have never heard a Southern person express the desire to own slaves. It is simply about Southern heritage which there is much to be proud of like most modern music, cooking, interpersonal style, politics, and architecture. That is a biracial contribution and black and white Southerners have a right to be proud of it today. There is a reason that most American blacks are concentrated in the South and they have no intention of leaving. It is their homeland too now and a codependent society.
I was raised by a black nanny who I loved more than most of my own biological family and I have black family members in the Jeffersonian sense. The Church of Liberal White Breadians like yourself can look down their nose at assumed attitudes in the South but that is the area where people of very mixed groups interact closely and successfully on a day to day basis from birth these days. There isn’t much conflict involved. We should send some tutors to the Israelis and Palestinians. There are a whole bunch of Northerners who will tell you how they adore black culture. There have cookbooks and African art on their walls and read all about it. The problem is that there aren’t any black people in the Massachusetts suburbs where I live now and I don’t like that. Boston is one of the most segregated cities in the U.S. so I have to resort to half of my high school classmates of Facebook to get any black diverisity.
I disagree. The Civil War was about the states’ right to secede from the Union when they didn’t like the outcome of the established process.
The particular issue which resulted in this conflict was slavery, but that was, ultimately, incidental. Could have been anything. Lincoln was not, as history records it, terribly concerned about freedom for Blacks and like many at the time, was actually a bit dubious about the prospects of freedom and integration. But as a Republican representing the industrialists in the north who resented the south’s advantage of free labor and were in great need of cheap labor to run their factories besides, ending slavery was seen more as an issue of fair trade and competition than of human rights.
The Civil War, at horrible cost, decided the question, DO states who have signed on and agreed to participate in the Federation retain the right to later drop out (take their ball and go home, forming their OWN nation within the federal territories, no less) when they get out-voted by the majority?
The answer is NO, they don’t have the right to accept all the benefits (economic/trade, political, military protection) of Federation and then back out of their “contract” when they don’t like the outcome of a vote or a court ruling.
If that precendent had not been set, the Union could not have endured. That horrific war was all about the viability of the United States of America as a system of government and a nation.
As for which side I would have supported at the time, I have no idea and neither does anyone else. We are products of our culture and time and it is impossible to remove ourselves from that context and place ourselves, hypothetically, in another and make accurate predictions about our positions or actions.
