Not necessarilly-there were newspapers and telegraphs back then and in addition some Southerners did fight for the Union.
I’m black, and revenge is delicious no matter the era. USA!
As a southerner with hindsight, I’d probably support the south vocally and the north inside. It just seems easier, even if it’s totally immoral. My support wouldn’t make much of a difference either way, because I’m not politically active and I’m scared of guns. When conscripted, I’d try real hard to be an extra terrible shot.
Without hindsight, I’d support the south thoroughly. Much of my ability to free think is a result of education and leisure. As a poor southerner, I doubt I’d have much opportunity for either.
The Union, of course. I’ve no patience for treason or slavery, and would be happy to scourge the South clean of both sins.
As a soldier you are sworn to protect the Constitution of your country:
States rights or no, I could not in good conscience defend this.
Union.
I likely would have supported whatever side my state of residence was. So, if I was Georgia born and bred, I would vote CSA. If I was New York born and bred, I would vote USA.
Indeed. Let me add the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Also can’t forget the American colonization of Texas, its subsequent war of independence from Mexico, and our subsequent war with Mexico. And the movement to acquire or colonize various other parts of Latin America.
Most of the history of the U.S. from 1800-1860 is about keeping the free/slave state balance ‘right’ so that the South wouldn’t walk.
Hell, Jefferson wrote about the causes of what would ultimately be the Civil War, and he died in 1826.
My father was a racist; a man who openly hated Black people with a degree of hatred that I never understood nor would he explain. I was disinherited by him because of my refusal to accept and live by his view of Blacks. My belief in civil rights and my views on discrimination made me a “nigger lover” in his view; he called me exactly that and carefully explained to me that it was that and that alone that caused him to cut me out of his will. So, I don’t believe I can be called a racist even though I live in THE SOUTH. That said, to ask whom I would have supported at the time of the Civil War is an exercise, IMHO, in stupidity: How the HELL could I know what I would have done all those years ago? It would have been entirely possible for me to have lived with entire life without ever hearing the concept that Blacks could and should be free. If I worked my ass off from dawn to night trying to wring a living out of a hardscrabble farm and if I could neither read nor write, my attitudes might well have been different due entirely to a lack of education and a lack of exposure to other ideas, other cultures, other ethical considerations and on and on and on. I think it is impossible to state with conviction what one would have done or would do unless one is in the soup at the moment. YMMV but I believe this is another in a string of useless and pointless polls. I voted but I’ll leave my choice to the imaginations of those who have an interest. Why anyone should have an interest to the answer of a meaningless question escapes me. (I made a choice in the poll just to have the option of posing my humble opinion.)
You voted CSA. This wasn’t an anonymous poll.
It wasn’t was it? You’re right, of course. My vote was based on the assumption that I would have been born and living where I was in fact born and lived. It wasn’t based on the fact that I am now or ever have been in favor of slavery. And I ain’t makin’ no damn excuses.
Including the ones from Delaware and Maryland? 
The slaves? Released of course. Since those states didn’t rebel, they would have no leaders to hang.
I’ve always thought the South had a somewhat logical argument about seccession; I simply don’t believe that South Carolina would have ever ratified the Constitution if its reps hadn’t believed they could leave if they chose too.
But I also think that the line about the war not being about slavery is bullshit. As I would most likely have been a slave at the time, I’d be supporting the North for practical as well as moral reasons. Assuming I hadn’t escaped to Canada.
Very well said. I hope I would have been independent minded enough that, even born in Alabama to a racist family, I would have sided with the union. But I have my doubts. Don’t trust me when the revolution comes.
The problem with this poll, I think, is while **Qin **thinks it is a reasonable question, in fact it is a silly hypothetical not unlike the one you-know-who is always starting. That is, it assumes a fantastic element: If you were magically transported backin time to the 1860s in the United States, and had no way to get home, and retained the attitudes and belief system you were raised up with, but somehow did not retain your knowledge of history and thus did not know how the Civil War was going to end, which side would you support?
Not even I would start that hypo. Not least because the retention-of-beliefs bit is difficult to reconcile with the ignorant of history bit.
I’m Ohio born and bred, and dyed-in-the-wool Union blue. I would be, as were my ancestors, in favor of upholding the Constitution, suppressing rebellion, destroying slavery* and acknowledging the lawful election of President Lincoln.
*Yes, I know that wasn’t a key U.S. war aim until later.
Indeed. Consider such noteworthy sons of the South as David G. Farragut (Tennessee), George H. Thomas (Virginia), Sam Houston (Texas) and Andrew Johnson (Tennessee), all of whom stood with the Union, and rightly so. Nearly 120,000 Southerners served in the Union Army, and every Southern state except South Carolina raised Federal regiments.
I grew up in NY, and I learned about this in school - and indentured servitude as well. But the North was against slavery even at the time of the Constitutional
Convention, thus the compromise banning imports.
Perhaps you forget that the integration you speak of was enforced on the South at gunpoint.
I went to school in SW Louisiana, hardly the most racist part of the south. When I graduated, and moved to NJ, I remember thinking, “gee, there are black people in this restaurant” - not the case typically where I used to live.
The First Arkansas Calvary, CSA, fought the First Arkansas Calvary, USA in Fayetteville, AR in 1863.
Somehow, I cannot feel proud that brother literally slaughtered brother in a microcosm of the Civil War.
I vote US, though none of my ancestors were around then. My grandfather did plumbing work in Georgia in WW I. His last name was Sherman. Saying that he wasn’t related because he was Jewish didn’t seem to help.