I tell Reb [del]Akiva[/del]Jackmanni, the centuries will pass and the son of Marse Robert will have probably been gay, and thou shalt not have read a book on the topic you argue, and our cities razed and our language expelled and the grass will grow in the cheeks and eye sockets of Tom Lehrer and thy cutting and pasting shall not ceased.
Off for a few days, so a historical assessment worthy of your own by way of holiday benediction. Be well, enjoy your holiday, and drive safely.
And as you march off into the Confederate sunset, we toast you in song:
*We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree,
We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree
We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree
As we go marching on
Glory, glory Hallelujah! (etc.)
His pet lambs will meet him on the way
His pet lambs will meet him on the way
His pet lambs will meet him on the way
As we go marching on
Glory, etc.**
*this is said to be a version of “John Brown’s Body” sung by ex-slaves who were unaccountably unappreciative of the many blessings bestowed upon them by kindly Southern masters.
Do you think that anyone is enthralled with reading your writing? Since I’d like to know?
Actually it was a version of “Say Brothers Will You Meet Us (on Canaan’s Happy Shore)”, which was sung in both white and black congregations in the south by 1852 before being adapted as a marching song by brigades north and south even before and long after Sgt. Brown’s odd demise. And the lyrics of your version were recorded at the time as “we’ll hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree”, and Davis was neither the first nor the last to have that sung about him. (Far later it was sung about Leo Frank, Clarence Darrow, and many others.) And Davis wasn’t hanged from a sour apple because though manacled, blinded, and imprisoned for two years the charges were dropped since… well… the Federal government flipped a coin, and rather than hanging to or from a sour apple he ended up writing his memoirs under a live oak in a comfortable retirement while most if not all of the slaves who sang that joyously in Charleston ended up in poverty and helpless once the Federal government dropped them like a hot potato when it became politically expedient to do so. Nice cut and paste though.
Thank you for reminding us of the high quality of Southern justice.
It’s true that the North was not willing to stay the course and prevent vengeful Southerners from ending Reconstruction and enacting Jim Crow laws and other forms of oppression. Not an elegant chapter in our history.
As for Jefferson Davis’ slaves, they had variable fortunes after the war.
"While in prison (after the Civil War), Davis arranged to sell his Mississippi estate to one of his former slaves, Ben Montgomery. Montgomery was a talented business manager, mechanic, and inventor who had become wealthy in part from running his own general store. However, floods ruined Montgomery’s early years at the reins, and he was unable to turn an early profit. The Davis family was unwilling to forgive the debt of their former slave, and he lost the land. Montgomery never recovered, and died soon after.
Another slave of Davis’ was able to play a role in the Union victory.
*"William Jackson was a slave in the home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. It turns out he was also a spy for the Union Army, providing key secrets to the North about the Confederacy.
…Jackson…listened closely to Jefferson Davis’ conversations and leaked them to the North.
Jackson was Davis’ house servant and personal coachman. He learned high-level details about Confederate battle plans and movements because Davis saw him as a “piece of furniture” – not a human, according to Ken Dagler, author of “Black Dispatches,” which explores espionage by America’s slaves.
“Because of his role as a menial servant, he simply was ignored,” Dagler said. “So Jefferson Davis would hold conversations with military and Confederate civilian officials in his presence.”…Dagler said slaves who served as spies were able to collect incredibly detailed information, in large part because of their tradition of oral history. Because Southern laws prevented blacks from learning how to read and write, he said, the slave spies listened intently to minute details and memorized them…
Jackson wasn’t the only spy. There were hundreds of them. In some cases, the slaves made it to the North, only to return to the South to risk being hanged. One Union general wrote that he counted on black spies in Tennessee because “no white man had the pluck to do it.”…“They were all over the place, and no one [in the South] considered them to be of any value. Consequently, they heard and saw virtually everything done by their masters, who were the decision-makers,” Dagler said."*
Wow, I guess not all of Davis’ slaves tearfully cherished his sainted memory till their dying day.
Thanks.
Nice selective reading of history by you, as always.
One good thing about this thread has been the opportunity to learn bits of information that the Hollywoodized versions of the Civil War and Southern apologists generally haven’t provided. Like the fact that the Confederate Army, far from representing noble sons of the South volunteering to preserve their homes from wicked Northern invaders, was actually in large part sullen draftees whom the South conscripted even before the North instituted a draft.
And there’s more tarnish on the Jeff Davis “legend”.
Have a nice trip.
Obviously you are.
Since you asked.
Actually it was his brother who initiated the sale, though Jefferson did complete it due to his brother’s advanced age (late 80s) and ill health. Plus Jefferson and Joe’s finances were hopelessly intertangled.
And yeah, the Davis was so unreasonable they foreclosed on a $300,000 mortgage ($7 million+ in 2009 USD) just because the mortgagors were unable to make the $18,000 per year payments for 8 years. Heartless. Good thing today there are laws against foreclosing on people who are a few years in arrears.
Actually it’s a fascinating story what happened to Davis Bend (now Davis Island), and foreclosure was actually voluntary. Davis had far more trouble securing the title from his brother’s grandchildren (Joe Davis- interesting guy- five children, raised them all, different mothers, none of them legitimate, but that’s trivia). Davis himself was also unable to turn a profit on it due to the damage done by war, floods, a hurricane (which was the name of half the plantation incidentally- HURRICANE HALL- named- interestingly enough- after a hurricane that killed Davis’s infant nephew to remind them it was nestled on a tragedy).
Anyway, though I somehow doubt you’re interested I’ll mention it anyway because it’s a little known but very interesting and arguably very important part of Civil Rights history: Davis’s former slaves, once they lost Brierfield and Hurricane, established an all black city called Mound Bayou- it’s still there but much smaller than it used to be due in large parts to black enfranchisement. Davis was on the city’s charter and often used his influence to secure funding for the place from public and private sources. (He had no political power of course- that requires citizenship- and he wasn’t rich [comfortable due to a bequest from his novelist mistress {fascinating story there: his wife separated because of their dalliance [not his first marital straying, and most of them after he was old and an ex-con- his most indiscreet was with Virginia Clay] but reconciled for a number of practical reasons, and- how’s this for southern Gothic? her husband’s girlfriend [Sarah Dorsey- great aunt of Walker Percy incidentally, not that I’m guessing you know who that was] nursed Varina through a long illness following a bout with yellow fever that was followed by suicidal depression over the death of Jefferson, Jr. [the fourth and last surviving of their sons], and Varina returned the favor by nursing Sarah during her terminal breast cancer, and Dorsey bequeathed almost her entire estate to the Davis family, specifically stating that should Jefferson predecease her or decline then the estate went to his daughter, and should the daughter predecease or decline it went to Varina- sorry, I digress, and this is trivia, but interesting as an odd novel isn’t it?
So where was I? Ah yes, Mound Bayou- a place that received funding from the U.S. government, from robber barons, and was praised as exemplary nature of “what the Negro race aspires to” by Booker T. Washington (who met with and charmed and was charmed by Varina Davis in the Hotel Majestic in NYC in 1902, which she needed perhaps because she was distraught over the recent death of her close friend Julia Dent (Mrs. Ulysses S.) Grant, and he was perhaps moved by her recent essays in which she said, in these words, “the right side won” while writing about the fact that Washington w…
Sorry, Mound Bayou. It’s a tiny town (about 2,100) formed by former slaves of Joe and Jeff Davis (their estates were hopelessly entangled- caused major problems) but it’s importance on southern culture and black history, while forgotten, is hard to overestimate. During the worst days of Jim Crow and segregation it was the only place where blacks routinely voted, where they took college prep courses in schools, where they received vocational training on par with what was offered in white schools, where almost all of the businesses, the newspaper, later the radio station, and of course all of the houses and surrounding farmland were owned by blacks. It was a beacon to black people from the Delta- so much so that they had to put restrictions on people moving into it. Its hotels were where wealthy and or famous blacks stayed when playing in that area of the country; Louis Armstrong and even Lena Horne were among those who stayed and performed there. In the 1950s it became the home of a newlywed life insurance salesman named Medgar Evers and his wife Myrlie and from which they organized boycotts of Mississippi businesses that were particularly unfair (“Don’t Spend Money Where You Can’t Make Water”) and voter registration initiatives.
Of course the Montgomery family hated Davis, as evidenced by the fact they continued to correspond with him- very warmly- until his death (two years after the incorporation of Mound Bayou, which he was involved with)- and his wife until hers attended both funerals, and gave a donation when Davis’s remains and those of his three sons were exhumed and reinterred to be with his son Joseph in Richmond (where Varina, whose funeral was also attended by Isaiah Montgomery and a delegation from Mound Bayou, joined them in 1906- Isaiah’s nephew was one of her pallbearers.
And in Davis’s last speeches, even as he urged young men to be proud of their heritage but also completely loyal citizens of the Union, he remained completely unapologetic about/openly defensive of slavery, the Confederacy, and was a white supremacist to the core. (His wife had never shared his views on the Confederacy but wrote in her last writings about her belief in white superiority, though she made an exception for mulattoes; of course so did Libby Bacon Custer, but she was on the right side.)
Nothing remotely complex about southern culture though.
Ah, Jackmannian research- the mark of thoroughness.
William Jackson was never, not one day in his life, a slave of Jefferson Davis. He was a hired coachman who allegedly served the family in Richmond for about 3 months.
Jackson’s intelligence was so great and wonderful a help that in an interview published on June 7, 1862- one year after the war began, more than a year before Gettysburg, when even Lincoln said the South was winning the war, he reported that the Davises were packing to evacuate Richmond.
The part about Confederate money is true but this was pretty widely known by anybody in the nation. The part about how much the people of Richmond were joyously awaiting the Union is… well, you might, a bit doubtful considering they were the last major Confederate city to fall and only did so afterthis and not to mention the fact that Jackson just said he was working in a HOTEL as well as a driver- this isn’t exactly somebody whose life is spent in service of the Davises.
That’s one of many references to him in the letters of the Davises, and it’s not the most moving by far. Brown accompanied the family to Montreal and at least twice he accompanied them to Europe. He returned to Mississippi when Davis did and lived with Davis in the two room guesthouse Davis rented from Dorsey (when their affair begin). His second wife Isabel served as the family cook (though Varina had little need of one- growing up among impoverished gentility she learned to cook without servants and by all accounts was excellent) and when Varina sold Beauvoir one of the stipulations was that Robert would occupy a cottage on the place until his death.
This is why you READ history rather than cutting and pasting it, and while you can’t help being a moron you can help typing. You don’t know jackshit about this subject.
I’ll leave you (for I really am off to my family this time- the nice thing about having 4 living relatives is they await you) with some lyrics that while completely irrelevant are at least more melodic and not Tom Lehrer’s:
Wanna hear it, here it is. (Lyrics slightly softened for recital version.)
I know you are but what am I? (Oh that’s right- I’m a twisted ideologue slavery loving Lost Cause apologist.)
It really is possible for you to misinterpret anything you read, isn’t it?
Oh dear. The pride of the old South has been touched to the quick again. How dare we disrespect the memory of old Jefferson Davis, soul of the Confederacy and ever so quick to dole out pocket money to his slaves? A lovely man.
It’s terrific that you can reel off all this undocumented effluvia, a tribute to your extensive reading of carefully selected sources which you unfortunately do not share, but we should take your word for it over nasty modern day, no doubt pro-Union historians.
What you do share is most compelling. Like sonofthesouth.net, an impeccably unbiased source of information which is capable of regurgitating an 1862 article from Harper’s Weekly.
Apparently your dubious source material despite all of its crinoline-wrapped splendor, has too obviously fallen short in the face of history and you’re compelled to sling insults like “moron”. You should take your trip before your GD lack of decorum becomes even more flamingly obvious.
See, it’s these nuances that those who attempt to defile the good name of the Confederacy fail to appreciate.
Thanks for sharing.
Oh dear, indeed. I’ve said repeatedly Davis was loathsome in many ways. What he was not was simple. He was complex as was his era. Why this is such an impossible concept for you to grasp- that a person can be very complicated, that a person can even have some loathsome views without being a monster, bewilders me. It serves nobody to think that bad things happened because of a bunch of evil frothing Bond villains; it’s far more horrifying that most people who served/led the Confederacy, or WW2 Germany, or the Eugenics Movement, or the attempted genocide of the American Indians, etc., were NOT monsters, they were people who could not or would not see acknowledge the humanity of those around them and overrode their own logic and knowledge. If history has a lesson for those capable of learning this is a big part of it.
Oh dear dear dear… this reminds me of those who called Obama elitist when he whipped their candidates in argument.
It is evident from your post- and explains much- that either
1- you have never been to college (this is not a value judgment; in general I do not see lack of formal education as a lack of intelligence any more than I see a college degree as evidence of intelligence)
or
2- you never took an English or history course beyond the survey level
or
3- that if you did take an English or history course beyond the survey level you didn’t pay much attention to it
I say this because you are unfamiliar with one of the most elementary concepts of research-
PRIMARY SOURCES
From Wikipedia comes this quite decent introduction:
As much as possible of my research is done with primary sources- everything from government records to memoirs to letters and written by and or about the people in question. While it’s true that primary sources are often heavily biased, this does not make them unreliable and without them you would not be able to have a remotely reliable biography.
I’ll also use secondary sources such as biographies written by scholars or popular historians. One of the specific things I look for is as much objectivity as possible. I could show you any number of books and videos I’ve trashed for having objectives both conservative and liberal that imo occlude the reliability; the most recent was ironically a DVD documentary of Jefferson Davis that I felt was ridiculously biased in his favor (and which I believe you can read on Netflix).
At the end of this I’ll give a select bibliography. If you would like documentation on any factual statement I’ve made please let me know what that is and I’ll supply a hyperlink if possible and an author/title/page number if it is not (and like as not you’ll be able to research that on Amazon’s “search inside” section or google books). Likewise, I’ll be glad to hear which of the following is the one you think of as ‘dubious’.
As for Son of the South- this is where your prejudice is blinding. As a matter of fact it is exactly an impeccably unbiased source. The site has no agenda. From their homepage and about us section:
Why they’re named that… you’d have to ask them. I assume they’re southern (Eldorado Texas is where the webmaster lives) but the site is 100% reproduction of primary documents. NOTHING MORE.
So, to combat your cite claiming that a Davis slave served as a Union spy providing valuable info because he was so close to it I produced the PRIMARY SOURCE they’re referring to which demonstrates very clearly that
1- He was not (and did not claim) to be a slave of Davis
2- The most he possibly could have worked for Davis in any capacity IF he worked for them at all was a matter of a few months because his story was in Harper’s Weekly less than one year after Davis moved to Richmond and at that time he (Jackson) had been in the Union for several weeks
3- The information he was known to have given was either stuff that was accurate but no secret (that Confederate money was worthless) or flat out wrong (the Davises were preparing to evacuate and the Union would be welcomed with open arms)
I provided further info that the Davis’s coachman was in fact intensely loyal to them, again using primary sources and sources that are of the kind usually found most likely to be true and completely reliable: eyes only from husband to wife. (Their letters definitely contain some coded info since they knew they’d be read, but it’s clear where they’re speaking in code [fascinating one that I’d love to figure out where Jefferson’s referring to a picture that is absolutely an attempt to convey something about money but I digress] but about Brown- who is mentioned numerous times before and after imprisonment and remained with the family til the end of his life- there’s no reason to suspect the Union cared about domestics or that there’s anything not transparent.
This completely, thoroughly, absolutely and in no uncertain terms undermines, tunnels further, stacks gunpowder in, and leaves a gaping crater in your source. So do you say “I was wrong” which is what a person of honor would do, or attack me for linking to a racist and biased website where the information and objective is to give information that is neither racist nor biased?
Get that? The reason they exist is to REPRODUCE PRIMARY SOURCES. Their pride and joy is Harper’s Weekly, which was a UNION source. (The South had very few newspapers that kept up production the whole war through, and only one of them was illustrated and most of it’s issues were missing.)
I could go on but I’m tired and I may as well be trying to teach my rat terrier how to speak German since it’s every bit as liable to work as attempting to debate you and he’s much less likely to misquote me. If you dispute that the Son of the South site is unbiased please explain why.
Assorted works that I have read and would recommend, and I will HAPPILY provide documentation of any or listen willingly and with an open mind to why you claim they are dubious (except for the primary sources- those are allowed to be biased for reasons mentioned above):
PRIMARY SOURCES (select)
Chesnut, Mary. Mary Chesnut’s Civil War. Edited by C. Vann Woodward from the Diaries of Mary Chesnut. There are many versions of the Chesnut diaries but this is the best assembled and best annotated. Chesnut knew both Davises very well as her husband was a senator in the U.S. and the C.S.A. and they were friends with the Davis family.
Davis, Jefferson. Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings. Edited by William Cooper. Full-text or excerpts of everything from personal letters to speeches to legal and government documents from the 1820s to a few months before Davis’s death.
Davis, Jefferson. Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881). Hardly objective and nobody would claim it is, but it’s primary and essential to understanding Davis’s mindset.
Davis, Jefferson. Private Letters 1823-1889. Partly available through Google Books (including the quote above about Robert Brown- as well as many other quotes about Brown).
Davis, Varina. Jefferson Davis: A Memoir by his wife. (Not available online in its entirety- just the second volume and excerpts- but is in print; includes Davis’s very brief autobiography.)
Grant, Ulysses. Memoirs. Not only primary but probably the single best set of presidential or Civil War memoirs ever written; Grant (who is not believed to have had a ghostwriter, just some editors) was an excellent writer who sadly appears not to have known this. (When I first read this book it was so good I wondered if [its publisher] Mark Twain had doctored it; the verdict of biographers and historians is an emphatic “NO”.)
Other: newspapers from Davis’s life, census documents 1840-1900, maps, accounts of individual battles by participants on both sides and the contemporary press, etc… Literally too many to name.
SELECT SECONDARY SOURCES
Far from exhaustive but the ones currently on my desk that I know I’ve used in this thread:
Cooper, William. Jefferson Davis, American. Called the definitive biography of Davis by the New York Times and other presumably “pro Union” sources, although perhaps it should be said Cooper himself is a professor at LSU (as was Sherman).
Cashin, Joan. First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis’s Civil War. Called the definitive bio of Varina Davis; I’ll agree but only due to lack of competition. (Makes absolutely glaring omissions and numerous small factual errors, as does Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust in Republic of Suffering which left me dumbfounded at her factcheckers, but I digress.) Better by far than the previous bio of Varina (Ishbel Ross’s hagiographic FIRST LADY OF THE SOUTH, long out of print) but a boring and too short treatment of a very interesting woman.
Hermann, Janet Sharp.Joseph E. Davis: Pioneer Patriarch. A slim but well researched volume on the life of Davis’s brother Joe. (The title is not as honorific as it may seem but has to do with his amazingly patriarchal views where women, poor whites, slaves and basically anybody who wasn’t a super rich planter were concerned and the fact he had so many illegitimate children [of his at least 5 children {possibly as many as 9 and that’s just counting free mothers} none were by his wife.) Joe was WAY more interesting than his brothers- almost scarily brilliant- as in “designed a steam powered air conditioner for his 12,000 square foot mansion [which also had running water and sewage in 1843]” intelligent, or “was born to a not particularly wealthy father who died bankrupt yet by the time he was 40 he owned 5 miles of Mississippi river front and hundreds of slaves” [the equivalent of being born a self made megamillionaire by 40 in today’s standards]. This and other books go into quite a bit of detail on his slave community.
Hermann, Janet Sharp. The Pursuit of a Dream. A book about the Montgomery family (former slaves of the Davises) and their attempts to establish an all black community at Davis Bend and after its failure at Mound Bayou. I would recommend this book to those interested only because it is to date the most researched book written on the topic but I’ll freely admit it’s flawed greatly, as if the author was a bit too anxious to have a happy ending for lack of a better description. The definitive history of Mound Bayou has yet to be and begs to be written (which is a shame and a puzzle considering how damned many histories there are of every battle of the civil war and the fact the LoC has a mountain on the mound including the Montgomery papers).
What areas of the country actually had slaves longer – the Thirteen Original Colonies or the South? Of course, there is some overlapping. I’ve tried to answer some of this question before, but in general, I am met with silence from the Yanks who seem to be unaware that they ever had slaves or that their ancestors were “monsters” also.
True, mine were “evil” more recently. We didn’t abolish slavery until 1865. Granddaddy didn’t have any slaves, but he went off to the war with his brothers all the same. He was underage, got sent back home, and then was on his way back to join them when he was taken prisoner and sent to Camp Douglas.
I just took a quick trip to Wiki. They list the years of slavery for these states:
Vermont – 17 years Rhode Island – 190
Pennsylvania – 206 New York – 201
Massachusetts – 154 New Jersey – 238
New Hamphshire – 200
I looked up my home state of Tennessee and it was 75 years.
I think that Virginia is about the same as New York.
And I think it was Delaware that didn’t give up their slaves when the Civil War started.
Someone else can look up the others.
**I have not seen a single person defending slavery on this message board. And of course it was a vile institution. But at Harvard University the buildings still bear the names of tthe slaveowners who built them. At Vanderbilt they finally changed the name of Confederate Hall. My father wouldn’t allow me to stay there anyway even though the Daughters-of-the-Confederacy (which I wouldn’t have considered joining) would have paid me to stay there.
And nobody laughed louder than he did when one of my black friends was elected President of the dorm.
I don’t ever remember waving a Confederate flag – even when I was a little girl and they weren’t considered offensive. (Old Miss had the Rebel Flag, etc.) I did take a carriage ride a couple of years ago and my tour guide was a young black woman in a rebel uniform. I thought that was sad. In three trips down through Alabama – top to bottom and back – I saw one Confederate battle flag – the same one – on the last trip, going and coming. But it was a big one erected by the Sons of the Confederacy. Piss poor taste. But I did see a lot of blacks and whites seeming to enjoy each other’s company.
I do like the song “Dixie” but I don’t sing it or hear it sung anywhere – maybe on a Mickey Newberry or Elvis recording from the 1970s (along with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”)
But I don’t glorify any war. Am am a pacifist as an indirect result of the Civil War. My grandfather regretted the war.
Some of you tire of telling your stories. But if that is what it takes to set things right, that’s the least we can do. As long as we are honest and not just looking for whipping boys, and as long as we are accurate about history and not romanticizing, then we are gaining ground. I guess this is part of the dialogue.
Pax
Odesio, I’m just now seeing your correction on my comment from weeks ago:
You are right that Washington’s and Jefferson’s names did not belong on a list of those who thought nothing of it. They were the early conscience of our country – if only they had acted then.
I apologize to all for repeating so much. I didn’t realize this was the same thread. I have short term memory problems and will rail on on this particular subject when give the chance.
I particularly apologize to the person who responded to my question about the years of slavery in different states. I blush at complaining that no one ever answers.
Make peace with everybody you can!
It’s not really a fair comparison. New York was colonized in 1624, Tennessee in the 1760s. So New York had been settled for 140 years before there were any white settlers in Tennessee to even own black slaves.
Well that, and New York never had 25% of its population consist of slaves, unlike Tennessee.
The people of Tennessee were small farmers not plantation owners. These people were poor. If Wiki has indicated that 25% of the population of Tennessee were slaves, then you will understand why it has earned a reputation as not being a reliable research tool.
What is your reliable source that indicates that 25% of the population of Tennessee were slaves? That figure is illogical, but I will accept it with reasonable citation.
The comparison of Tennessee’s 75 years of slavery with New York’s 200 years is perfectly fair when you consider that there was already an abolitionist movement underway in Tennessee before the Civil War… What is New York’s excuse for that kind of brutality for over two hundred years? Or New Hampshire’s excuse? Or New Jersey’s?
But do you ever hear the “Northern Slave States” criticized? To hear Chris Matthews talk (and I am a fellow liberal) only the South was responsible for oppression of blacks in this country. Yet in his home city of Philadelphia at one point, one out of ten residents owned slaves.
Southerners are taught, and rightly so, that we were responsible for terrible Jim Crow laws in our country after Reconstruction and continuing until the Civill Rights Movement and Act. We know as children that our forefathers fought to preserve the institution of slavery. I don’t know at what age children realized what a shameful thing it was. Slavery has always seemed a vile thing to me. I can’t remember not feeling that way.
But are Northern children ever taught they they were slave states? Judging from the way Northerners talk to Southerners here, I would think not.
Why is the North not worthy of contempt?
When it comes to slavery, it is. I think the difference, though, is that you don’t see Yankees celebrating any institutions whose main purpose was to protect slavery.
Well there is a tad of a difference between having participated in an abhorrent institution in the past, and having ceased said participation voluntarily, and having participated in it, and then fought a long and bloody war to be able to continue participating in it, and then even after losing attempting to continue it under a different name.
It only makes sense to ask this question if you think the South = Confederacy. It doesn’t. And you know this.
The “South” was in existence long before the Civil War and continues to exist today. It doesn’t have a government or a united belief system. It is simply a regional designation that happens to correlate with certain cultural artifacts.
The Confederacy was in existence for less than 5 years. It had a government that came into being on the basis of a particular belief system. What was that belief system? That the South had a “right” to enslave black folks, and if it took war to uphold that right, then so be it.
There is no comparison to the North here because 1) the “North” did not and never had its own government and 2) it’s sole reason for being was not based on enslaving another race of people.
Here’s a list of the free population and slave population of each state in 1860. taken from the book, “The Civil War and Reconstruction”:
http://www.civilwarhome.com/population1860.htm
It lists Tennessee as having a free population of 834,082, and a slave population of 275,719, meaning that 24.8% of the population was slave.
It’s not a good comparison, because New York is so much older. If you’re going to make a comparison, compare like to like, not unlike to unlike. Undoubtedly, if Tennessee had been settled at the same time as New York, it also would have had over 200 years of slavery.
There was a period of time in history when slavery was almost universally accepted in what would become the US. Then you started to see a moral movement grow towards abolition, and those states that weren’t economically dependent on slavery, including New York, abolished it. Those that were, including Tennessee, didn’t, and, in fact, retrenched in their support for it.
