No, but you jumped onto my response to it. Leaping into an existing convo doesn’t wipe out the chain of posts you’re responding to.
Feel free to not do that, then. It’s not like I was talking to you, in any case. You stuck your own oar in.
It’s a group discussion on a message board. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect the focus on the conversation to expand and contract and adjust accordingly as others join in the conversation.
I’ll hold up my hand next time to ask permission before interrupting you mid-snide.
We can see a lot of these arguments proved in the smaller situations that preceded the CW:
Georgia was not meant to be a slave state. Founder James Oglethorpe was a friend and admirer of William Penn, and when Penn was sent to debtor’s prison, Oglethorpe reacted with a profound distaste for human bondage. However, the profit motive won out.
in our proto-Civil War “Bleeding Kansas,” all the CW players were present in smaller scale. Purely ideologist abolitionist represented by John Brown, but a majority of Free-Soil Kansans who didn’t want to be economically overwhelmed by large slave plantations who could afford economies of scale. Against them were these same rich planters, demonstrating that the pen is mightier than the sword by writing checks to finance militias of poor Missourians who, embracing the American dream, hoped to have their own slaves someday too.
Not a viable hope anyway because, as already been shown in Texas, cotton and any other high-yield/labor intensive land use gave out at the meridian of the Hill Country. Further west all that could be done was cattle ranching. Cowboy slaves equipped with horses, pistols and camping gear made for a bad ROI.
It’s also “not unreasonable” to expect when someone replies to something, that they’re aware of what that person is replying to. So “I didn’t start with poor Northerners” is irrelevant. The goalposts were moved by you even if you didn’t plant them.
Sure - if this is your usual reaction to getting called on moving goalposts, I would appreciate the heads-up.
Modnote: @MrDibble & @QuickSilver
Please drop this personal squabble now or take it to the Pit. But no more in this thread.
The Vietnam War is a recent example that comes to mind. But that’s been mostly corrected, in a way the Civil War hasn’t been.
That’s the problem- there’s no nuance or anything. Someone in say… 1861 Alabama pretty much had to have been some sort of abolitionist, or they are viewed by many as having aided and abetted slavery and all that went with it, and are therefore culpable.
Which is a very black and white view; most people of the time had little influence on that sort of thing, and their concerns were generally closer to home than the concerns of Col So-and-So’s slaves on the plantation several miles away. They were more concerned with whether their crops might fail, or if their sick horse would pull through, or if there would be food enough for winter, etc…
This is no different than the average German under Nazi rule, or even people in the 1960s with the civil rights movement. Most people’s pressing concerns are more immediate and personal than that stuff- are they going to make rent, for example. Is their car going to break down? How do they take care of their aging parents? And so on. For a great many people, stuff like social justice is way down their priority lists.
But the way some are teaching it and the way some public discourse is going, it’s basically an all-or-nothing decision, which lacks nuance, and implies that anyone not protesting in the 1960s was a tacit racist because they weren’t actively anti-racist. I’m not sure I agree with that, and I can see why some people would get their hackles raised by the implication that their forebears were that way.
This is my understanding of what the war was about. Neither Lincoln nor most northerners were aiming to abolish slavery, at least not immediately. Yes, they doubtless wanted the fugitive slave act repealed, but they mainly wanted to prevent the extension of slavery into the west. And the South perceived this as inevitably leading to the abolition of slavery and who can say this perception was wrong. I had an American history instructor (he was a TA) claiming that the slave economy would have collapsed, probably by 1900. Of course, even that would have left slaves, at least house slaves.
I have heard the sentiment that the US could have won the war in Vietnam if only the military had been given a free hand. Probably a little closer to the Dolchstosslegende that animated Germany after the Great War.
I think part of the difficulty in coming to terms with the Civil War vis-a-vis Vietnam is the proximity of the wrongs (and the wronged) done in the former. If we have done wrong and acknowledge it, how to make it right?
Except the Germans have the good taste to avoid naming schools after Hitler, to avoid acting like the Nazis were heroes. That’s a difference, and not a trivial difference. Germany didn’t produce a popular '80s TV show with a classic Mercedes called Der Führer decorated with a big swastika on the hood.
We did.
That was us.
We taught a generation of young boys (me) that General Lee was awesome and the Confederate battle flag was a Symbol of Southern Pride.
If southerners want me to respect their ancestors, step one is to admit shame for the shameful things some of those ancestors did. Until then, don’t insult me by asking.
It should be noted that Kentucky was, with Delaware, one of the last entire states of the US to maintain slavery right up to the passage of the 13th Amendment. Administration of laws relating to the enslaved in Kentucky was often given to Kentucky slaveholders, to ensure that laws passed by a Republican-dominated Congress could be softened in practice in the state. Proslavery sentiment was strong in the state right up to the end, forcing Lincoln to move carefully - after all, he said “I would like to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.”
Now West Virginia I think is a solid example of the victory of Lost Cause underdog marketing, and the loss of historical awareness.
The American South is not a culture that values education and learning. It is why, prior to the civil war, southern school children took a pledge to never read Uncle Tom’s Cabin; it’s why there is still a resistance to taking down confederate symbols: white southerners built a culture that relies on systemic racism to maintain white privilege and maintaining that system requires a population that his hostile to learning and the sharing of challenging ideas. It is why the Texas government is rewriting the history of slavery in the 21st century; the free sharing of ideas is the death of white southern culture.
In addition to Delaware, another Union state that rejected the 13th Amendment was New Jersey. Not sure what the “reasoning” was there, but I doubt it was because New Jersey was a hotbed of proslavery sentiment. You could also call out Iowa, California and Oregon for dragging their feet on ratifying the 13th Amendment.
No idea what this is supposed to mean.
Somewhat true in parts of western and southern Kentucky during the Civil War years, but not true in central and eastern Kentucky.
How much congressional representation did they lose permanently for trying to destroy the country?
States across the South gained congressional representation as a result of the 13th Amendment; with the 3/5ths clause a dead letter, the states of the Confederacy had more representatives in Congress and electoral votes than before.
And once the Redeemer governments instituted restrictions on voting (and the federal government signaled that it wouldn’t attempt to enforce the 15th Amendment) there was no need to keep those who were represented in the political process at all.
The Lost Cause furnished the justification for this withdrawal of the franchise.
CA, OR and IA were all free states from admission; NJ had a few enslaved people living there as they had implemented post-nati emancipation some years earlier.
As to why they didn’t ratify the amendment, I haven’t a clue - but only in DE and KY was property in the enslaved fully supported and legal up until ratification.
I think the modern formulation is “personnel is policy.” Having slave sympathizers in charge of enforcement of laws in the state allowed the use of loopholes and subtle interpretations to keep the enslaved in bondage even in situations where the law pointed otherwise.
I’m not sure how to disentangle the threads of unionism and antislavery (or indifference to slavery) in this case. There were plenty of proslavery Unionists in the upper South, even in areas where there were few slaves. Do you know of some scholarship on the topic in the case of Kentucky?
And once the Redeemer governments instituted restrictions on voting (and the federal government signaled that it wouldn’t attempt to enforce the 15th Amendment) there was no need to keep those who were represented in the political process at all.
Should have read “there was no need to keep freed blacks in the political process at all.” Sorry, too late to edit…
Some dregs? Kentucky now is one of the main hotbeds of Lost cause, and racism.
Man cannot live on Bourbon alone.
Well, more like General Rommel, but good points here.
We also named military bases after CSA generals, schools after the worst of them (NBF) and also statues everywhere.
People have been drafted into war since long, long before the Civil War. The blame has usually, as it should, fallen on those who did the drafting.
It’s very easy to say you’d refuse to serve, and yet the number who do is very close to zero. Had you been in that situation it’s a safe bet you’d have been wearing grey and hoping to just get home alive. Pinning the blame on some kid from Fordyce who died in terror and agony in a ditch five hundred miles from home seems to be letting the real perpetrators off the hook.
I am far less sympathetic to the people today who wave Confederate flags even when they might never have taken up arms against anyone. They should know better.