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Carrington
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Mon Jul 02, 2012 4:12 am

Belisarius7 wrote:New Englanders were no angels in the history of the US. New Englanders had been fighting natives since Plymouth, just as Virginians had since Jamestown. They fought their share of native wars in the Ohio Valley before and during the Creek and Seminole Wars. Many Union officers and soldiers from the American Civil War went on to serve out west in the Indian wars.

With regards to slavery, New England made and operated merchant ships that bore the Africans over from Africa to be slaves. Slavery was a national institution, though by the 1860s the South was the only section to find it profitable. Economic factors contributed most predominately to the banning of slavery in the North. This banning was not for the interest of black Americans, who at the time were not wanted by the American white population. The majority of white America, North and South, held natural racial prejudices for the time. While many did not like slavery, they very much did not want to free the slaves and then let them be equal to themselves. This is why you have Colonization societies in the US since independence. The problem was not just slavery, but racial tension that would play out nationally, in the rural South and urban Northern ghettos, for the next century.

The Mexican-American War was not purely, or even predominately, a Southern filibusterer attempt. It was part of a larger jingoistic American trend. Polk was just as willing to go to war with Great Britain over Oregon as he was Mexico for Texas ("Fifty-four forty or fight!), although ended up coming to an agreement with Britain (Oregon Treaty). The Mexican war was brought about by Democrats in the North and South. Southern interests in expanding slave states (thus keeping equilibrium in their eye) and Democrats in the North for Manifest Destiny, lucrative ports and railroads to them, as well as maintaining party cohesion.

As Lincoln so often stressed, the sins of the nation are the sins of the whole American people.


It's not that what you say is entirely untrue. It's almost always possible to argue for some degree of equivalence.

I know my ancestor, Cornelius Davis, was granted his plot of land in mid-state CT the late 1690s as a reward for his efforts in King Philip's War -- the war that exterminated most of the central/Southern New England tribes. His family kept the land through the '50s -- it recently got sold to a Swedish fellow -- but it the land was originally purchased in blood.

John Chivington was, of course, 'Union.' And the later, more systematic war against the Plains Indians was more 'clinical,' arguably less bloodthirsty, but still conducted as a war of extermination.

And, absolutely, I've been reading Life and Times of Frederick Douglass -- it's quite clear that the North had its share of race hatred.... though ironically, the 'inhospitality' he encountered in the skilled trades (as a caulker, etc.) was probably one of the things that pushed him onto the lecture circuit so quickly. (As far as I can tell, Douglass actually turned out to be quite a good investment for his owner -- sometime in the 1850s he bought his own freedom, finally, in British sterling, giving the b...d who owned him a fairly good rate of return.)

However... there's a reason Charles Sumner got brained on the floor of the Senate by Preston Brooks. There's a reason the Fugitive Slave acts of 1850 prompted such violent opposition in the North. There's a reason the Mexican-American War prompted such violent opposition in the North. There was even a reason that the State of Vermont seceded -- as a free state -- from the state of New York, then a slave state... and a reason why, by roughly 1856, it was making secessionist noises again.

Now, to be certain, there's also an economic reason why Vermont was depopulating to help settle Kansas (Cotton trumps wool). But the people it sent were die-hard republicans, and the resulting strife was fairly predictable.

And finally, the 'natural racial prejudices of the time' is a far over-simplified view. Leading up to the Civil War, slaves were one of the largest single categories of wealth in the United States. (As a matter of politics and political propaganda, think 'social security is the third rail of American politics' and amp up the voltage an order of magnitude.) It was also pretty much a no-brainer to imagine how the value of that 'asset class' might suddenly, and very sharply decline: if it were to become more common that the 'assets' walked off on their own. Ideologies of white supremacy were an essential element in maintaining the slave system, and it's fairly easy to pick out direct investments in building this ideology by 'the slave power' -- though, perhaps, Fitzhugh wrote Cannibals All just so as to avoid lazin' around all day.

One of the remarkable things about Frederick Douglass' career was the amount of time he spent in exile in Ireland and in the U.K., and his shock to face so little 'natural racial prejudice' while abroad. This is of particular interest given the particularlyinflammable ethnic relations between Irish immigrants and free blacks in the cities of the North: clearly there were social factors at work beyond natural prejudice.

That all said, a great many white northern soldiers paid in blood for their prejudices, natural or reinforced.

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Belisarius7
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Wed Jul 04, 2012 3:04 pm

Thomas Niska's post made several assumptions that I disagreed with.
1. That Southerners were the majority who sought the Mexican-American War.
2. The Creek and Seminole Wars were fought in the South by Federal troops and Southern frontiersmen. To mention those two wars specifically and leave out other contemporary native wars being fought in the North was misleading and meant to imply that Southerners were just land hungry

While Jackson was fighting the Creeks in the South, William Henry Harrison was fighting Tecumseh in the North. While Southerners were fighting the Chickamauga Wars, Northerners were fighting Pontiac's War. Expansion into the great lakes region was no less bloody than expansion into Tennessee and the Mississippi Territory. US expansion and the toll that took on the natives should not be blamed on any section specifically. It was national expansion and is part of a unified national history. Southerners are no more culpable in this than their Northern brethren.

My slavery point was not to play a sectional blame game. I was only pointing out that slavery was connected to the North just as it had been to the South. Slavery was a national institution upheld by the Federal government, despite what state allowed it or didn't. It was a national problem that had to be dealt with and was tragically done so through a civil war. My point in mentioning the economic factors of the North was only to show that connection, not to directly compare their involvement with someone from the South. The point was to show that slavery was a national problem that our nation as a whole created and therefore needed to amend.

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Thu Jul 05, 2012 4:49 pm

Belisarius7 wrote: Slavery was a national institution upheld by the Federal government, despite what state allowed it or didn't. It was a national problem that had to be dealt with and was tragically done so through a civil war. My point in mentioning the economic factors of the North was only to show that connection, not to directly compare their involvement with someone from the South. The point was to show that slavery was a national problem that our nation as a whole created and therefore needed to amend.


No. You can draw equivalences all you want, but this one leads to a profound misunderstanding of the causes of the Civil War, and, more germane to both the game and the history, a profound incomprehension of why so (very) many Northerners were willing to fight and die in a war for the Union.

First, slavery was a Southern (up through Delaware and New Jersey) institution from which the North certainly derived some profit. The ruling class of the South was deeply interested in the perpetuation of their 'peculiar institution' and extremely active within national politics to ensure its perpetuation. This should be no surprise -- their livelihoods, retirements, and estates were entirely at stake.

Second, until 1850, slavery was also, in essence, a Southern problem. The South's successful efforts to pass the fugitive slave laws, and later the Dredd Scott decision made slavery into a national problem. The fugitive slave laws required that local and state authorities in the North cooperate with Southern slave-catchers and bounty hunters. The Dredd Scott decision imposed Southern citizenship laws on Northern states. And so, you have the 'oh hell no' moments that were the birth-pangs of the Republican party.

These were the events that began to hammer home the dreadful reality for Billy Yank: that the conflict over the Republic and the conflict over slavery could only be solved through blood.

Understand slavery how you want, Belisarius, but realize that your understanding cascades into a much larger, very often wilfull miscomprehension of American history.

... of course, it is true that you can fall back a step, and blame the ... (I'll edit that) slaves themselves for having the pertinacity and bad manners of walking away from their oh so benevolent masters. And so necessitating laws for their recapture North of the Mason-Dixon. Here, perhaps, you might be right; indeed, as I understand it, many of those fugitive slaves would wear such blame with pride.

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Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:50 pm

Carrington wrote: Understand slavery how you want, Belisarius, but realize that your understanding cascades into a much larger, very often wilfull miscomprehension of American history.

Ad hominem statements, like this, are a good way to turn a constructive and friendly discussion into a flame war.

We're both historians and we both have differing interpretations on history. This is what historians do and it's natural. To suggest someone else is wrong because you believe they have a distorted view of history is a logical fallacy and counter productive to a good historical discussion.

This discussion has gotten off the thread topic so if you want to continue to discuss this, we should move this to another thread or do it through PMs. Though, I do think we are skirting the line with AGEOD forum policy with this discussion considering our topic. It would probably be best you PM me if you want to continue.

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Carrington
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Fri Jul 06, 2012 5:48 pm

Belisarius7 wrote:Ad hominem statements, like this, are a good way to turn a constructive and friendly discussion into a flame war.

We're both historians and we both have differing interpretations on history. This is what historians do and it's natural. To suggest someone else is wrong because you believe they have a distorted view of history is a logical fallacy and counter productive to a good historical discussion.

This discussion has gotten off the thread topic so if you want to continue to discuss this, we should move this to another thread or do it through PMs. Though, I do think we are skirting the line with AGEOD forum policy with this discussion considering our topic. It would probably be best you PM me if you want to continue.


Absolutely, we're running into meta-discussion quite quickly, and only somewhat productively. And, as a historian, you might be quite correct to suggest that the historian's response would be to ask "what are your sources?" But, I note, that is not the path you take.

Nevertheless, let me be clear: I don't believe you are wrong because you 'have a distorted view of history.' I believe you are wrong because you've adopted -- uncritically -- an older and discredited historiography. This historiography is itself based on a demonstrably selective range of primary sources, and must be seen as part of a specific, interested effort to tastefully arrange Americans' memory of the Civil War.

As to whether this thread has gotten off topic, not really.

As Howell Cobb observed, correctly, in opposition to Lee's efforts to enlist black soldiers:

You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers. The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong."

It would seem, given this gentleman's testimony, as if slavery and the character of slavery were indeed germane to the issue of Black Confederates.

The following, granted, would be off topic:

http://mynorthwest.com/813/702246/Dave-Ross-Brits-mock-our-Pursuit-of-Happiness

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Mon Aug 27, 2012 6:05 pm

What's the old saying, 'the winner gets to write the history books.'

It would make sense for a victorious and vengeful North to twist facts of blacks fighting alongside their Southern brethren. The divide and conquer tactics of the Civil War has played hell with truth for the last 150+ years.

In the end it could be 1 cook or 50,000 soldiers. But if only 1 black man took up arms to protect his homeland from Northern invaders, it still blasts holes in the idea that racist white slave owners were going to war to keep their chattel slaves and the right to smack their women around. The way history books were written immediately after the war had Confederates basically twirling their evil mustaches and riding away with the captured princess to their dark castle, while the innocent King Abe Lincoln looked on helplessly.

The South did a lot of bad stuff and a lot of good stuff, same with the North. I think with all things, the truth usually lies somewhere in between.

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Sun Feb 10, 2013 7:41 pm

Boomer wrote:What's the old saying, 'the winner gets to write the history books.'

It would make sense for a victorious and vengeful North to twist facts of blacks fighting alongside their Southern brethren. The divide and conquer tactics of the Civil War has played hell with truth for the last 150+ years.

In the end it could be 1 cook or 50,000 soldiers. But if only 1 black man took up arms to protect his homeland from Northern invaders, it still blasts holes in the idea that racist white slave owners were going to war to keep their chattel slaves and the right to smack their women around. The way history books were written immediately after the war had Confederates basically twirling their evil mustaches and riding away with the captured princess to their dark castle, while the innocent King Abe Lincoln looked on helplessly.

The South did a lot of bad stuff and a lot of good stuff, same with the North. I think with all things, the truth usually lies somewhere in between.


One or 20,000 black soldiers serving informally in the Confederacy does nothing to blast holes in the truth, told by the racist white southern slave owners of the times themselves (as they would have been proud to be called), that they were going to war to keep the institution of slavery.

Now, was the north blameless either? Nope. They were almost all racists themselves, though many regarded the institution of slavery as a bad thing for their own livelihoods (try competing with slave labor) and didn't want it where they lived. It was out of self-interest they opposed slavery for the most part, rather than caring for the slaves.

The only people back then who have some semblance of moral authority by today's standards were the abolitionists who were also for full social equality and did not ascribe to racial theories, who were few and far between indeed.

But I think a lot of people miss who the "victors" of the American Civil War were. The victors were, for the most part, racist, powerful wealthy white men, and their interest in historical revisionism was to unite the country by trying to forget the issue of slavery completely and erase black people as part of the story at all. Both north and south, wealthy white men shared this goal, and so it was pretty well instituted. Blacks were seen as inferior for the most part by both sides, and certainly were the biggest "losers" in the historical retelling of the Civil War, being largely written out of it, unsurprisingly, by historical revisionists back then. Being the least powerful and most discriminated against group, and with plenty of people still fearing them and despising them, it's not surprising. So then the Civil War was a "tragedy" that was about some "state's right" issue or other, really just a sad story... right?

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Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:28 am

The only people back then who have some semblance of moral authority by today's standards were the abolitionists who were also for full social equality and did not ascribe to racial theories, who were few and far between indeed.


If I may:
Let us not forget that those who fought in the United States for civil rights in the many decades after the civil war looked to these abolitionists for inspiration. They inherited a struggle for freedom that was (In my honest opinion) mostly fulfilled over a hundred years after the civil war and continues to the present day for some people.

If we wanted to we could point to all the rhetoric about freedom and equality from as far back as the Declaration of Independence and say that it was a bunch of baloney considering that many of the signers owned slaves or considered blacks and foreigners inferior. But without these founding principles, many of the abolitionists and later civil rights workers would have nothing to rally around. Even if these ideas first applied to only rich white men, even if to some extent they still do today, the important thing is that the ideas existed and could be expanded to really include all men and women.

I don't think it makes sense to say that Blacks were the losers or winners of the war. I think the war was another step in the dolorous journey toward equality.

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Tue Feb 12, 2013 3:22 pm

Gen. Monkey-Bear wrote: all the rhetoric about freedom and equality from as far back as the Declaration of Independence and say that it was a bunch of baloney. But without these founding principles, many of the abolitionists and later civil rights workers would have nothing to rally around. , the important thing is that the ideas existed and could be expanded.
I think the war was another step in the dolorous journey toward equality.

These ideas does not come from bourgeoisie, they come from (at least french) fighting people against them and (even before that) against loosing aristocracy (aristocracy then allied with victorious bourgeoisie, both against a true democracy). Bourgeoisie in France then replaced liberty by republic. The story went almost the same in young USA.
It's like in Russia, where Bolsheviks took the ideas of people (free soviets) to better master them (soviets become locked, if not destroyed, by the Party).

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Tue Feb 12, 2013 3:57 pm

I consider the American Civil War to be a good example of the bourgeoisie(north) replacing the aristocracy(south) as the dominant political force. What do you think of this idea?

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Tue Feb 12, 2013 4:06 pm

Actually ERISS I think we (or at least I) are getting off topic. You could send me a PM if you like, but I think it's best if we don't ruin this thread by straying off topic.

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Fri Feb 15, 2013 7:00 pm

Krautkid wrote:
But I think a lot of people miss who the "victors" of the American Civil War were. The victors were, for the most part, racist, powerful wealthy white men, and their interest in historical revisionism was to unite the country by trying to forget the issue of slavery completely and erase black people as part of the story at all. Both north and south, wealthy white men shared this goal, and so it was pretty well instituted. Blacks were seen as inferior for the most part by both sides, and certainly were the biggest "losers" in the historical retelling of the Civil War, being largely written out of it, unsurprisingly, by historical revisionists back then. Being the least powerful and most discriminated against group, and with plenty of people still fearing them and despising them, it's not surprising. So then the Civil War was a "tragedy" that was about some "state's right" issue or other, really just a sad story... right?


Hurrah! Couldn't have said it better myself. We've done this issue before, but let me just put my 0.02$ in.

Black people who participated in the Confederate States military did so for a number of reasons. Some were officers' servants, often mixed-race relatives or other close, life-long companions of their masters, who identified their own personal interests with those of their masters. This highlights the feudal basis of southern society and the strength of family ties in the south, even when those family ties could not be formally acknowledged. Many officers' servants were enrolled on regimental lists so they could draw rations and perhaps also pay (to the extent that the CS Army paid its soldiers). Many African-Americans also were required to work for the CS military as laborers moving supplies, building forts and roads, and so forth. Many of these people ran away and became "contrabands" (often also very poorly-treated) in the US military. The fact that people kept running away from CS labor camps in order to live in US labor camps suggests that the majority of African-Americans identified ideologically with the United States cause. Some wealthy free blacks did support the Confederate cause for a combination of ideological and family reasons, but these were very rare. Finally, a very small number of enslaved African-Americans were enrolled in the CS Army in the final weeks of the war on the promise of freedom for themselves. Freedom is a very powerful motivation, which other slave societies in the Americas used extensively to get African-descended people to serve in their armies, but the Confederacy was very reluctant to do this and only began after the war was essentially over. I don't think any but a tiny fraction of these people enrolled in the CS military in order to "defend their homeland against northern aggression." They were either forced or were seeking benefits for themselves or family members. Any attempt to portray the ACW as a war by a united southern people against "Yankee aggression" is the purest form of historical revisionism.
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Fri Feb 15, 2013 8:36 pm

Seen much of that historical revisionism being taught in public schools lately? Not exactly. I remember being taught all those fun facts about the civil war in history class. We were taught that father Abraham descended on a cloud and hovered over the south, demanding that he free his people. Then, in a fit of rage, Jefferson Davis went onto a talk show dressed up in klan robes, raped a black woman, then ran off to start up a nazi militia army that planned on launching feces catapults at the capital building. That's why father Abraham dropped an atomic bomb on Richmond, thereby killing the south's last remaining 700 foot tall skinhead robots and forced them to surrender and take an oath to watch Honey Boo-boo and American Idol and eat large quantities of genetically modified foods.

Aren't debates fun? I'm going to continue drinking heavily and laugh at what I just wrote. Thank you, public education! :bonk:

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Sat Apr 20, 2013 2:45 am

While the subject of black participation in the CSA war effort is an interesting historical discussion, unfortunately the topic often is hijacked by Neo-Confederate revisionists who stretch the facts in service to their arguments that the Civil War was not really about slavery, that slavery wasn't so bad, that black people loved their southern masters, etc.

The best test of these neo-Confederate theories is what happened to blacks in the south after the war ended. One would assume the supposed mass black participation in the Confederate war effort would have been reflected in changed attitudes by white southerners after the war. It was the other way around. The KKK arose and launched a campaign of terror, intimidation and killing to keep blacks in their place. The first set of Reconstruction elections, which had resulted in the first black Congressmen, were overturned by preventing blacks from registering to vote and voting. Many of these southern states would not see another African-American congress person for another century.

It is also a fact that during the war, as soon as black slaves had the chance to escape due to the advance of the Union armies, they flocked to get away - even when the reality of freedom was living in a miserable contraband camp. We also need to remember the blacks who wore gray tended to be in the servants, teamsters and ditch diggers part of the war effort - and when they had the chance they deserted in droves as well. While there are indeed stories of blacks serving faithfully alongside white masters, it was not on equal terms as we understand them and it was not representative of the condition of blacks in the south as a whole.

The Neo-Confederate argument that "African-Americans fought for the Confederacy" should be seen for what it is - an attempt to rewrite history to make it seem that slavery wasn't such a big deal. It makes about as much sense as arguing that Americans participated on both sides of WW2 because of the German Americans they found in the SS in Normandy.

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Sat Apr 20, 2013 7:37 am

elxaime wrote: Neo-Confederate revisionists who stretch the facts in service to their arguments that the Civil War was not really about slavery, that slavery wasn't so bad, that black people loved their southern masters, etc.

The Neo-Confederate argument that "African-Americans fought for the Confederacy" should be seen for what it is - an attempt to rewrite history to make it seem that slavery wasn't such a big deal.

Yes, but they're right the war was not about freeing slaves. Freeing slaves was a tool of economical, and actual, war, of the North. That was not the goal. Propaganda made it a goal. See in the North after the war how the blacks were treated, for long, so they needed a Malcom X. And slavery was forbiden, but waged work is still legal.
It's like french in WW2 talking about freedom and thereafter killing algerians, malagasy, etc... Freedom was just a tool limited to the war, not the goal.

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Sun Apr 21, 2013 9:41 am

ERISS wrote:Yes, but they're right the war was not about freeing slaves. Freeing slaves was a tool of economical, and actual, war, of the North. That was not the goal. Propaganda made it a goal. See in the North after the war how the blacks were treated, for long, so they needed a Malcom X. And slavery was forbiden, but waged work is still legal.
It's like french in WW2 talking about freedom and thereafter killing algerians, malagasy, etc... Freedom was just a tool limited to the war, not the goal.


I would still disagree with the idea the war was not about freeing slaves. We need to recall the mixed original purposes of the war and howw it evolved over time.

The North went to war with a coalition that had mixed motives. For many northerners, it was all about the Union and there were also some economic reasons for this. Western union supporters did not want to see the mouth of the Mississippi held by another authority that was likely to control their outlet for commerce. Many unionists also opposed slavery not so much on moral grounds, but because they saw its spread as a threat to free labor. However, from the start, for many federal supporters it WAS about abolition. This was particularly true of the New England regiments. These differences were the dilemna Lincoln tried to resolve. He could not act against slavery without losing the border states and many War Democrats. But he could not uphold slavery without losing support from abolitionists and New England.

The same was true in the south. Many southerners did not own slaves. They saw the fight mainly as a fight to control their own destinies. However the CSA political authorities - and the Confederate Constituion - clearly and unequivocably made the maintenance of slavery one of the foundations of law. It was viewed by those who held the decision making powers as key to the southern economy. The end of slavery would mean the end of the south. And across the board, even for those who didn't own slaves, there was resistance to the idea of black equality. The south did not have an abolition movement on the scale of the north.

This is key. The north was a coalition to a great degree of people fighting to preserve the union for various reasons. However abolishing slavery was from the very start an integral and major element of that coalition. For many Unionists, slavery was what it was all about. In the south, for many who held slaves this was also true and for even those who didn't they would have fought to prevent Yankee abolition from setting up blacks as economic competitors. There was some overlap in attitudes north and south, as many northerners who supported abolition opposed black equality "in all things."

Now it gets interesting. As the war went on, and as northern hearts hardened against the Confederacy, support for abolition grew. Partly this was the growing bitterness over losses and partly the revelations of northern advances into the south that brought many northerners, for the first time, into first hand contact with what slavery actually meant. Diaries of Union troops are full of references to how attitudes were changed once they witnessed how Africans were actually treated and lived. Attitudes also shifted as they saw blacks willingness to risk death and misery by escaping slavery once they had the chance. By 1865, it is safe to say that attitudes towards slavery had hardened across the Union but particularly in the Union armies - troops' votes gave Lincoln his edge to win re-election in 1864. As Lincoln memorably put it in the Spielberg movie, his actions like the Emancipation Proclamation were given the popular approval when people decided to vote him back into office. And whether people were against slavery for moral reasons or for reasons of military exigencies, there was support for its abolition.

Historian James McPherson puts it best, I think. While the American Civil War did not come about ONLY because of the issue of slavery, it would not have occurred without its existence and its abolition was supported at the end as a necessary requirement of southern surrender. There was never any reasonable likelihood of a negotiated peace with the south keeping its slaves, so long as Lincoln held office (if McClellan had won in 1864, perhaps there may have been, but we can only speculate - its not a sure thing even little Mac would have gone that route).

In a nutshell - the Neo-Confederate argument that the ACW was not about slavery is wrong. However an argument that the war was, especially at its outset, only about slavery is also wrong. Yet as the war progressed, abolition came more and more to be a main prerequisite of the Union war aims.

War aims change and shift over the time of a conflict. That is what makes wars so daunting - they rarely lead where people expect them to. We approach the anniversary next year of the start of World War One. No one in power in 1914 expected the war to develop as it did - into a miserable and brutal conflict that would end with the overthrow of most contending ruling elites and in some places even revolution.

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Sun Apr 21, 2013 2:31 pm

I'm rather confused about this term 'neo-confederate'... what is that, like the civil war version of New Coke? Just kidding. But in sticking with words and terms, there are many contentious issues regarding the civil war that make it just as much a hot topic today as it did over 150 years ago. I think in terms like states rights, the issue is definitely NOT decided, especially in regards to nullification and increasing Federal government powers, which is exactly what our original founding fathers warned us about from the beginning. Having said that, there are a great many Federalists out there that promote the idea of imperialism via the Grand Republic, aka Unionism, sometimes we also now call it 'American exceptionalism', though I'm sure many in the South would grab onto that term as well. This is the old socioeconomic model of Hamilton and Madison, the one that promoted the idea of becoming an empire in order to defeat other empires.

Many Federalists old and new totally agree with the idea that secession from any part of the whole must be squashed immediately, because in the end, if secession works legally or militarily, then in truth it contradicts the strength and viability of the whole system from end to end. That's why the South had to be occupied and destroyed in the minds of the public, that's why the region that once created presidents and generals now creates Honey Boo-Boo and Hee Haw. The civil war and post civil war period was social conditioning at its most efficient and brutal. The civil war was, for all intents and purposes, the Lebensraum for American imperialism. With strong states working under the pretext of confederation, there was only so much the nation could do, with a strong central government, anything was and is possible. Caveat emptor, when creating a strong national/regional/global government, make sure there are checks and balances in place, or hell can and will break loose. Just ask Weimar Germany about that.

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Mon Apr 22, 2013 3:43 am

Good points. But I would say the theme of limited government as a Confederate war aim is overstated. At the time, in order to resist the North, it became clear the CSA needed a strong government. States militias that hesitated to leave their boundaries just wouldn't cut it. Ditto for coordinating the war economy - there had to be a strong hand at the tiller. It did not take long for the pragmatists to overcome the idealists. The CSA was the first of the two warring sides to introduce conscription. Rigorous rationing and regulation followed, especially of essential war materials like metals. Ironically, the idealist insistence on small government was a drag on Confederate war efforts up until the very end. The south had a true dilemna - give up on the ideals of limited government to fight the war more effectively. Or create a strong centralized government to fight the war - to adopt methods that they supposedly were resisting. Pretty early on they went with the latter. It remains an open question as to what would have happened later if the south had won. Would the idealists then have forced a return to the Jeffersonian ideal of a pygmy-sized army and navy and weak central government? With a no doubt revenge-minded north bordering them? I suspect not.

There was a yawning gap between what the idealists preached and what they ultimately practiced. So to claim this was a battle of two systems is an overstretch.

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DrPostman
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Mon Apr 29, 2013 5:15 pm

The State of Mississippi Declaration of Secession makes it very clear that their motive
was to preserve slavery:
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/mississippi_declaration.asp
"Ludus non nisi sanguineus"

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ERISS
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Tue Apr 30, 2013 12:50 am

DrPostman wrote:The State of Mississippi Declaration of Secession makes it very clear that their motive
was to preserve slavery:

It (North) seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

Blacks became waged worker for the North, if they could, for almost nothing. From a slavery to another.
It's like the paper-less in France: bosses love and sometimes protect them, for they work for a tiny income.

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Tue Apr 30, 2013 4:57 am

ERISS wrote:Blacks became waged worker for the North, if they could, for almost nothing. From a slavery to another.
It's like the paper-less in France: bosses love and sometimes protect them, for they work for a tiny income.

True, they were still a kind of slave, but most workers in that day and age were. I bet they still preferred it to life on
some of the horrific plantations that existed.
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elxaime
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Tue Apr 30, 2013 10:29 pm

DrPostman wrote:The State of Mississippi Declaration of Secession makes it very clear that their motive
was to preserve slavery:
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/mississippi_declaration.asp


The historical records of the time reflect that the estrangement between northern and southern states from 1775 on was based primarily on the institution of slavery. It was the major cause of the Civil War. And the South, as embodied by its laws, fought to preserve slavery. Modern attempts to deny or disparage this fact need to be set right. It makes one realize how in countries like France people tend to avoid particular subjects like Vichy in WW2. We do the same in the USA. The post war Glorious Cause mythology of the Confederacy was partly a way to bring the shattered nation together again. Ditto for Jim Crow laws. There is much truth to the idea that the American Civil War is still being fought, albeit with words not bullets now (a much more preferable method).

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Tue Apr 30, 2013 10:50 pm

Along with the French the Japanese haven't really come to terms yet with what happened during WW2, other than to consider
themselves victims because of the nukes. Almost none of them have ever heard of Unit 731. In Germany though I believe they
have done so and have put what happened behind them, for the most part.
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Wed May 01, 2013 11:44 am

DrPostman wrote:True, they were still a kind of slave, but most workers in that day and age were. I bet they still preferred it to life on some of the horrific plantations that existed.

It depends: It's like waged work: There were well cared slaves, like there are well paid waged workers. Not all slaves were in horrific life conditions.
So, the war was not realy against slavery: If it were against slavery, it should be against waged work too: The war was to slaves become waged workers, not to free them. From a master to a boss, fear of whip or need of money, being killed or comitting suicide.

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Wed May 01, 2013 3:32 pm

ERISS wrote:It depends: It's like waged work: There were well cared slaves, like there are well paid waged workers. Not all slaves were in horrific life conditions.
So, the war was not realy against slavery: If it were against slavery, it should be against waged work too: The war was to slaves become waged workers, not to free them. From a master to a boss, fear of whip or need of money, being killed or comitting suicide.

Except for a few of those pesky state declarations where they specify slavery as the reason
for cession. Kind of difficult to ignore blatant phrasing like that.
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