On April 2, 1861, the New York Times reported on a speech given by Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy. The speech has gone down in history as “The Cornerstone Speech” because in it, Stephens described the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy and the key cause of the coming Civil War:
They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails.
I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.
The twisted logic and faulty reasoning of Alexander Stephens are the exact same tools that the modern followers of the Confederate train of thought–be they self-described as Republicans, conservative or Tea Party–use to argue anything and everything. You could replace the issue of slavery with the rights of workers, or climate change, or Health Care reform, or budget cutting or anything else and the argument still follows the same script, rhetoric and magical thinking. Then as now, their views are always rooted in a fantasy world. And they always react with hostility to anybody who dares offers an opinion, cites a fact or presents evidence that their POV is groundless.
150 years ago the New York Times wrote about the clear madness of Stephens and the Confederacy:
It would indeed be impossible to manifest more palpably the utter impotence and suicidal character of this movement than is done by the spirit of the articles of faith with which this “model nation of history” comes before the world. In such spirit nothing was even devised, planted or built by man: Success on such terms is possible only on condition that all that makes history illustrious ina cheat, Progress a mockery, and the world without a God. The records of humanity are not without similar tragic episodes of national delirium, which assume, on the pages of History, the character of a sort of irony of the Fates.
With a few word changes the NYTs could almost write the same paragraph about today’s modern fantasy based conservative movement.
The more things change, the more that some things remain the same.
Cheers
Corner Stone
A cornerstone is a cornerstone. And you can’t lay a good foundation without one. Whether argument or building, you need one.
wasabi gasp
Alexander H. Stephens laid an egg with his.
Valdivia
Except that the media lords can’t state things as clearly now so they would not call a spade a spade I think. Maybe I’m too cynical.
But two cheers for the post. As always on point.
Phoenix Woman
It is, in fact, the cornerstone for the train of thought that would result in the Southern Strategy a century later. You know, that thing for which Michael Steele was ostracized by his fellow Republicans because he admitted it has been the GOP’s go-to strategy for over four decades?
The key, of course, is that the SS is not just a bigot alliance, but a corporate-bigot alliance. It’s where Corporate America plays on bigots’ prejudices, getting them to agree to cutting rich people’s taxes (and thus spending on social programs) on the idea that blacks would be hurt worse than whites. Or, as Reagan advisor Lee Atwater said back in 1981:
piratedan
if you want some scary parallels, try reading Harry Turtledove’s alternate history series where the South wins in the Civil War (thanks to the idiocy of the Northern leadership like McClellan et al) starting with the book “How Few Remain” thru ten books concluding with “In At the Death”. Turtledove characterized the South evolving into a racist/fascist state, with their battlecry of “Freedom” being turned into an Orwellian motif. You still see these wingnuts driving around with a Confederate flag decal and decrying their own FREEDOM without the least glimmer that the symbol is essentially treasonous. In this case, the victors are supposed to dictate the terms, obviously our forefathers did a less than effective job if we’re still reeling from those ripples today.
Jay C
Interesting stuff, Dennis: thanks for the link. I hadn’t, in fact, read all of Stephens’ “Cornerstone Speech” before; and despite all the lofty rhetoric, noble sentiments, and parochial griping about tariffs, etc. (did old Alex have investments in Georgia railroads, or something? He seems to have been quite worked up over them), it is instructive to see how fundamental a bitter, inflexible hard-core racism was to the foundation of the Confederacy. “States’ Rights” vis-a-vis the Federal Government seems almost an afterthought; it’s the “natural law” of racist slavery that rules their consciousness, and is their central motivator. And they don’t think twice about its innate righteousness – ever.
But I had forgotten this little dig he tossed in near the end:
IOW, it’s all about the money, and it’s all their fault: the classic dodge of the abuser…..
Elizabelle
Great series of articles, Dennis.
You’re spot on about the Confederate party. That framework holds for analysis.
Dennis G.
@Jay C:
It is all About the Benjamins with these guys. That and how to steal the labor of others to pocket more Benjamins…
asiangrrlMN
The more things change, the more they, it seems, stay the same. To the point and cogent as always, dengre, but profoundly depressing.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: The real question to answer is, now that we have a diagnosis, what are the solutions? ARE there any solutions? Or do we just try to change hearts and minds one individual at a time?
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
It’s sadly ironic that those middle class and below voters who support the Republicans don’t realize that as soon as their utility is at an end their masters will cut them out of the herd and dispose of their rights and stature just as they are trying to do to their “enemies” now.
The wails of “You can’t do this to me!” will be heard far and wide – it’s just that no one will be listening.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: I honestly don’t know. We are so entrenched in the corporate mentality, I don’t see how we can extricate ourselves.
opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland
I believe that Mr Stephens is the gentleman that my Irish great great grandfather mentioned needing his neck in a noose, along with a few other rebels. This was in a letter in 1863 from his home in Canada, and he said that would end the problem (the Civil War).
Roger Moore
@Jay C:
I think the charges of Northern hypocrisy on the issue of slavery had more truth than many people want to admit. Plenty of Northerners made their living on the backs of slaves, a few directly by smuggling but mostly indirectly from cotton products. The Southerners believed with more than a bit of justification that the North would shut up about slavery when they realized they would hurt themselves by trying to stop it. The North was deeply divided about the Civil War, and it would be foolish to deny that some of that was financial rather than ideological.
opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland
@piratedan: Thank you. I greatly annoyed an idiot cousin by pointing out the treason of individuals flying the Confederate flag. He stopped speaking to me.
MeDrewNotYou
@asiangrrlMN: I’m pessimistic about the future. Global warming, peak oil, food/water/resources shortages, etc. But the thing that brings me down the most is our (and the world’s) corporatocracies. Short of the poor and middle class of the world simultaneously wising up, in the long term we’re screwed.
But you know what? I’m eating some coffee ice cream right now, so I can escape from worrying about the future. :D
kdaug
@asiangrrlMN:
It’s the ancient concept of a hierarchy of humanity, some being more equal than others. Certainly goes back to biblical times (Pharaohs and slaves), but I think it might go back further than that – Neanderthals vs. Cro-Magnons.
We know the great apes also have wars – not fights, WARS – in which two separate groups go on killing sprees against one another. No one, as far as I know, knows why they do it, but they do.
I think the “corporate mentality” is an extension of a very, very old reality of our makeup.
ETA this distillation: Why do primates form tribes?
Jay C
@Roger Moore:
True enough that there was a non-trivial segment of the economy in the antebellum North that made out – often quite well – on trade with, or based on, the products of the slave-labor economy. Particularly, IIRC, in New York, whose business class started harrumphing about a secession plan of its own. And (white) Northerners were often every bit as racist as their Southern brethren: even where anti-slavery sentiments were common.
But, in the event, financial considerations proved NOT to be a significant factor to the Union; shortfalls from Southern trade were more than made up for in the wartime economy; “ideological” ones (however defined) ended up as a more potent motivator North and South: the rush to enlist in Blue or Grey in 1861 wasn’t based solely on monetary considerations.
Joseph Nobles
And did they learn anything? No. Read the official proceedings to write Alabama’s current constitution some time. The explicit reason they had gathered?
Yes, that constitution written in 1901 is STILL the law of the land in Alabama. Sure it’s been amended to hell and back – because it plants so much control over local affairs into the hands of the state legislature, every little local matter requires a constitutional amendment – but the avowed, unashamedly racist constitution of the state of Alabama is still right there for anyone to read.
It’s even a breath of fresh air, incredibly enough, to read documents like this. Frank Luntz would have a heart attack, but these mens knew what was up. Hell, most of them had probably fought in the Civil War, and those that hadn’t, their daddies and granddaddies had. It was only forty years since the start of the war.
Sometimes these Confederate apologists hack me off, you know?
TenguPhule
And if we follow the same solution they came up with back then, we kill 70% of their followers, hang the leaders from the tallest tree and pillage and burn their homes while their wives and children weep bitter tears….wait, what’s the downside of this?
MeDrewNotYou
@TenguPhule: What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!
Sly
Apropos of nothing, I give you the Right Honorable Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright, renowned physician of the Confederacy who, in 1850, published the following tract about “Drapetomania” and “Dysaethesia Aethiopica” in DeBow’s Review, a popular Southern magazine, in 1851:
Shorter Dr. Cartwright: All these black people are running away and resisting work because they have a mental illness peculiar to their inferior race. Rather fitting with Stephen’s notion of abolition and racial equality as an affliction of the mind.
I also recall Emperor Justinian designating anyone who did not accept the Apostles’ Creed as insane, and deserving all the proper intervention that the insane would rightly receive in the Eastern Empire during the 6th century.
Villago Delenda Est
But..but…
The War of Northern Aggression wasn’t about slavery, it was about Northern aggression, state’s rights, tariffs, Rhett Butler going on buggy rides out into the country with some belle but without a chaperon and then wouldn’t marry the belle, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…
Obviously, Alexander Stephens was some sort of Yankee plant, who was acting as an agent provocateur! Yeah, that’s it! That’s the ticket! Also, too, an obvious agent of the New Black Panthers and ACORN!
Villago Delenda Est
@piratedan:
Yup.
Turtledove’s “Freedom Party” isn’t that much different than National Socia1ist German Worker’s Party in that the name is a marketing slogan, that has nothing to do with the actual philosophy of running the State.
Pretty much how “Libertarianism” is really neo-feudalism.
Corner Stone
@MeDrewNotYou: What’s awesome? Ask my 6 year old this.
Joey Maloney
@Incoherent Dennis SGMM: See Winconsin: Walker, Scott; Ohio: Kasich, John; etc.
(Not to say that the unions are only or even primarily white, but the Confederates have gone completely post-racial; they’re not even bothering to disguise that it’s an economic attack.)
Mark S.
Man, Stephens was one ugly mofo.
piratedan
@Villago Delenda Est: well I guess the point the other side is attempting to make is that if we side with the unions and the poor, then we’re socialists and commies. Looking to take what they have “rightfully earned” etc etc etc, the government being “in control” of our lives. They never said this about Eisenhower and sat back and let their lackey McCarthy try and fragment the government and turn us on each other. Yet Ike himself was the 2nd biggest “commie” after FDR for all of his GI Bill and Interstate freeway system to build upon the work done in the New Deal in connecting and educatring the country.
They’ve fought against infrastructure every step of the way, against civil rights, social security, equal rights and pay for women, workers compensation, I struggle to find one single concept that is tied to conservatism that was of a benefit to the country. The conservatives in the War of Independence were the freaking Tories, liberal ideals are the FOUNDATION/Cornerstone of this country and these asshats have turned it into an insult. Are there some concepts that have gone too far, yeah, political correctness for one, but the good far outweighs the bad, but all of those other hallmarks like equal opportunity, public education, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, all of these concepts were radical at the time and these guys wanna turn us into a racially homogeneous theocracy, without the understanding that the feudal lords have already been chosen and there only so many lackey positions to go around and don’t get me started on the guilds…..
It’s like 35% of the country forgot about everything they should have learned in 10th grade Social Studies.
Joey Maloney
@Mark S.: Orwell said, “At age 50, every man has the face he deserves.”
Mark S.
Never heard of this before:
That makes a lot of sense.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The powers that be in the South decided that if they can’t own slaves then they would make their supporters slaves to their cause. It’s all about the money and cheap labor, that’s all. They don’t care about anything else. Since they can’t own slaves then they will use their money to turn people against each other so they can then take advantage of them.
Divide and conquer, it works.
It’s nice to see something from the Grey Lady that has some meat to it. Too bad it was so long ago.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Sly:
you have to wonder if this was written cartwright with deadly serious earnestness. or if he knew his rationalization for whipping slaves didn’t have to make sense, it just had to be authoritative. like a paid shill for the slave masters in the vain of any conservative think tanker, or brooksian columnist.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
The War of the Rebellion was perhaps the first genuine humanitarian intervention attempted in the world, and we’re still living with the stain of what the slavers did.
My recollection is that the aggregate value of held slaves pretty well dwarfed all other asset values anywhere in the country at the time. They pretty much owned the Federal government due to their population numbers, and that the slaver oligarch political power was concentrated (that’s what the 3/5 rule did). Combine that with the notion of a tiny middle class dedicated to upholding and concentrating the Southern status quo, a working class that was obligated to contend with slave labor in competition (and thereby completely reliant on slavers to not crush them), a slaver-obeisant church and local media, and you’ve found the reason why Southern white working class folks are still responding to multiple generations of acculturation to racism and worship of their “betters”.
It is truly disgusting.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
written by cartwright.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@piratedan:
The radicals were right – Reconstruction should have been far more severe, and there should have been a sizeable number of hangings among the Confederate leadership.
If you hang Lee, Stephens and Davis as criminals and examples, the rest of the populace gets the message.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@kdaug:
Short answer – big brains, but pretty soft, and species success comes from using those big brains in cooperation.
A lone John Galt gets his head staved in pretty early in life.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
Another observation while we’re on this – in true hihilst teabagger form, when an election (which they lie about in claiming they’re so fond of) doesn’t go their way, they immediately want to quit the whole game and proclaim oppression.
That’s what the slavers did, before Lincoln even took office – and that is because he merely talked about having a national discussion on slavery.
Draw that parallel between slavers then and teatards now.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@piratedan:
Interesting thing, this. With all the slave/stolen labor the South had available both before the War of the Rebellion and the years up through the Civil Rights Act, you’d have thought that the South would have built up a rocking wonderful physical infrastructure. Instead, as always with great Galtian decionmaking decisionmakers, instead of building up a solid local economy, they applied those resources to the whims of the indolent monied classes.
I call them the typical Southern lazy assed trash rich folks – gambling, financial speculation, lavish displays of real estate and furnishing to impress others (who really aren’t impressed).
It is a genuine cultural defect among Southern whites, particularly those of wealth and privilege.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@Mark S.:
Blair was the David Broder of the day.
kdaug
@Yevgraf (fka Michael): Opposite direction – why not cooperate among all tribes? Why tribes in the first place? Why nations?
Answer that, and you’ll have the answer to world peace. And I’m sure Cole will give you an award or something.
(Don’t look at me, I’ve got no idea).
bob h
We are saddled with a reactionary South that prevents us from achieving the fully modern, compassionate society we desire.
Sly
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
Cartwright was a fairly well respected physician in the South. His full paper on Drapetomania, for instance, was published in The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal and received wide acclaim. It was a sincere attempt to address what was, for the plantation class, a persistent problem.
People did actually believe this shit, and it actually got worse before it got better. Cartwright couldn’t hold a candle to early 20th century eugenicists like Madison Grant, and he’s certainly a pleasure to read compared to Nazi race theorists like Alfred Rosenberg.
drkrick
@kdaug:
Because humans don’t seem to measure success by what we have – we measure it by having more than the next guy/family/tribe/nation. Which means living in a bigger cave the the next guy eating bugs is on some level more satisfying than both of you living in mansions.
drkrick
From the actual post:
Actually, the logic and reasoning of Stephens is fine. As he himself points out, he’s off the rails due to his premises before he starts to spin the first argument. You can certainly make an argument about whether the desired conclusion helped them pick their premises, but I suspect that by the mid-1850’s they really were working from a sincerely-held premise out.
In our time, the premise seems to be that no Democrat can legitimately hold power. That’s the 21st Century cornerstone. The fact that Obama’s race presents unique opportunities to tear him down with a certain breed of knuckle dragger shouldn’t blind us to the fact that any Dem in power (Bill Clinton, Pelosi, Reid, Gray Davis) is the target of the same kind of wrecking ball.
nancydarling
@drkrick: So, in spite of our opposable thumbs and big brains, we are glorified bower birds?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Roger Moore:
Oh, I dunno…After all, the Copperheads were pretty well known in their day, their treachery glossed over when Confederate apologists were allowed to control the popular history of the conflict.
There is, however, another side of the coin: The typical white Unionist was fighting not for the lofty goals of abolitionism, but simply for the preservation of the Union. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (I have noted this at least once before in dengre’s Civil War posts), but I tend to agree with whomever raised the point at Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog that there were three groups fighting the war, each with their own goals: The white Confederates, the white Unionists, and the Abolitionists, mostly comprised of blacks, with support from a relatively small group of high-profile, vocal whites supporting the cause.
Craig
General Sherman on South Carolina:
This state, their aristocracy … their patriarchal chivalry and glory–all trash. No people in America are so poor in reality, no people so poorly provided with the comforts of life.
I am satisfied … that the problem of this war consists in the awful fact that the present class of men who rule the South must be killed outright rather than in the conquest of territory, so that hard, bull-dog fighting, and a great deal of it, yet remains to be done. Therefore, I shall expect you on any and all occasions to make bloody results.
There is a class of Southern men, women, and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.
drkrick
@nancydarling: In many cases, yes. There are exceptions, of course. We tend to call them saints and kill them.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@piratedan:
I’ll raise my hand and admit to slogged through that whole series- I appreciate Turtledove’s twists of history, but the dude is a horribly formulaic writer- but I’ve got to point out that Harry gives Little Mac a pass: The entire series happens because the bundle of cigars wrapped with Lee’s orders for the Maryland campaign are immediately noticed to have been dropped at Frederick, so they never fall in to Mac’s hands.
jwest
“If treated kindly, well fed and clothed, with fuel enough to keep a small fire burning all night—separated into families, each family having its own house—not permitted to run about at night to visit their neighbors, to receive visits or use intoxicating liquors, and not overworked or exposed too much to the weather, they are very easily governed—more so than any other people in the world.”
Isn’t this the Democrat Party platform for 2012?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Craig:
That said, Billy the Goat was still a pretty vile racist. He could have cared less if black folks were slaves, as long as their masters remained loyal to the Union.
kdaug
@drkrick:
Heh. But do you think this comes down to a primal cross-species mating strategy, then? That bower birds (and similar) explain greed? And that DFHs are descended from Bonobos?
(Seriously serious here).
Distilled: Is there an empathy gene?
drkrick
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): I don’t know if I’d call that giving him a pass. Given the logistical realities, he shouldn’t have been able to end the war much sooner without that kind of stroke of good fortune. The fact that he managed only a tie at Antietam even with it is really kind of amazing.
kdaug
Bonobo
(Use sex to resolve differences, unlike gorillas and chimpanzees.)
flukebucket
@Craig: I have heard that on his deathbed he also said his one great regret was that he was not able to kill every Indian on the continent. Sherman must have been a real piece of work.
aimai
@Yevgraf (fka Michael):
Michael Lind made this point in one of his books, can’t remember which, contrasting the cavalier/rape and pillage/slash and burn mentality of the southern planter with the economic philosophy of the yankees and northerners. The philosophy of the south, and later of Texas, was “move in, take over, gut and exhaust the soil, and move on.”
aimai
nancydarling
@kdaug: I think it is the primate researcher Franz de Waal who found evidence of an empathy gene, even in rats. Chimps will show empathy (grooming behaviors, etc.) toward another chimp who was beaten up for no good reason by an alpha. If a chimp is acting like a jerk and gets beaten up, no empathy is forthcoming.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@drkrick:
Yeah, but in Turtledove’s alternate history, the scenario is painted not so much as Mac as a tremendous dolt losing, but the genius Lee winning.
I certainly appreciate the reality that Mac blew it at Antietam, but it’s hard for me to blame him for the tenuous position he inherited after Second Bull Run. Sure, his gutlessness after the Seven Days contributed to the situation, but Mac wasn’t commanding against Jackson in the Valley. All of this to mean that I don’t think there was a general in the theater at the time who could have kept Lee from cutting off Washington without the aid of those cigars.
The entire upper echelon (corps commanders and above) of the army in the East was too inept to take on Lee at the time. Those who might have been capable of leading the AotP in September of ’62- Hancock and Reynolds leap to mind- were too far down the chain of command to be promoted to leadership of that army.
jwest
“…like all other truths in the various departments of science.” “Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity.”
Stephens was a prototypical liberal, citing the overwhelming consensus of “science” at the time that blacks were a subservient species, as opposed to the Lincoln-led bible-thumping republicans of the North who thought “all men were created equal”. Stephens believed that slavery was in the best interest of blacks because who could take care of these people better than he?
Dr. Cartwright also couldn’t believe slaves would act against their own best interest by running away.
“They have only to be kept in that state and treated like children, with care, kindness, attention and humanity, to prevent and cure them from running away.”
Slavery is a study in liberal policies.
nancydarling
@jwest: There is a crock of shit in every paragraph you write.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@nancydarling:
Agreed. Failure to note that those “scientists” from whom Stephens got his evidence were every bit the bible-thumpers as the abolitionists- whose ranks at the time did not include Lincoln- is the acme of historical ignorance and/or dishonesty.
Josie
As I read the speech, I realized that the entire premise for him is the Creator’s intention. It is impossible to argue with one who believes that he absolutely knows the intention of God or FSM or whatever and that the intention is …fill in the blank. The greatest danger we face is the melding of religion and government, because men will be tempted to use religion as an excuse for their own venality.
Chris
While remaining absolutely presuaded that it’s the other side that’s rooted in fantasy world. I often hear them invoking “God” and “America” to win debates (badly, it’s true), but the weirdest thing of all is when they start invoking things like history, logic, reason, and all that to back them up. It almost sounds like they’re aping liberal language because they don’t know what else to do.
Hmm. Delusional nutbags so high on themselves that they’d rather destroy the union than have to lose their precious, precious privileges? Why, I can’t see the parallels at all. One can only hope that if it did come to civil war, they’d lose again.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
The theory I heard in history class is that the South was really fighting for slavery (because that was the foundation of its economy and its way of life, not to mention central to its sense of superiority): while the North was fighting over (against) states’ rights (because they wanted to keep the Union together: Lincoln even said something to the effect of “if I could keep it together without freeing the slaves, I would.”)
Later on, when the dust settled and mythology started to be written, those things were switched, and people were told that it was the South (didn’t want to be thought of as bigoted assholes) that was fighting over states’ rights, and the North (didn’t want to be thought of as authoritarian assholes) that was fighting over the slaves.
Having said all that… the Civil War did result in the slaves being freed.
keestadoll
There aren’t enough ways for me to describe how I love this evaluation. I think I’ll begin committing it to memory right now.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Chris:
I’m not sure if this story I’ve read on the intertubes is apocryphal, but if true, it’s hilarious: After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, a northern state legislature or two floated a trial balloon that they were going to invoke their states’ rights to nullify the act. The slave states wen apoplectic over this.
Chris
@piratedan:
Actually, I seem to recall either McCarthy or someone close to him did accuse Eisenhower of being a Red. Certainly the John Birch Society believed that.
It’s an untold story about McCarthy that his downfall probably had a lot to do with pissing off Republicans. He shot himself in the foot several times by attacking such cherished icons as the Eisenhower administration, the Defense Department, and the Protestant clergy. If he’d just kept it partisan, stuck to attacking Democrats and those faggy elitist Hollywood and State Department nancy boys, the Republicans would probably have been a lot more willing to stand by him when he finally went down.
Chris
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
LMAO, I imagine they would! I don’t know if the story’s true or not, but I do know that they were pressuring the federal government to override a myriad of state laws in the North (such as the laws in some states and cities that prevented Southern Gentlemen from bringing their slaves with them when they traveled).
States’ rights for me but not for thee: much like present day beliefs that the federal government should keep Kentucky’s pork money (gathered in New York and California) flowing for farm subsidies and highway subsidies forever, but it’s socialism if New York tries to keep some of that money and put it in Harlem.
aimai
@Chris:
McCarthy went after the Army, and that was his downfall. Sort of like Walker going after the Police and Firemen.
aimai
drkrick
@Chris: I’m not sure that’s entirely fair to the ’50’s era GOP. A lot of them were appalled at McCarthy, but too scared to risk getting crossways with his supporters or becoming the target of his attacks. Sound familiar?
Once he started attacking them, the cost/benefit ratio shifted and he started to get the bipartisan pushback that brought him down. I’m not sure attributing their acquiescence to fear instead of agreement is any better, of course.
It’s interesting that in the current TP iteration, operators like DeMint have been able to attack their own (Chafee, Bennett, McConnell via Rand Paul as proxy) with impunity. Perhaps the money boys are more on board this time than they were with McCarthy. Or maybe it’s just that DeMint isn’t a raging alcoholic.
Omnes Omnibus
@drkrick:
This time, the guy with alcohol issues is on the “sane” side of the GOP.
Chris
@drkrick:
Fair point about the GOP, and I should’ve mentioned that he had quite a bit of support from Democrats too (especially Catholics, hence the Kennedys’ acquiescence/support for him).
As for the current iteration… they’ve been doubling down on the crazy for decades, people are used to it and even support it at this point. What was a popular but still fringe movement in the 1950s has become mainstream today.
alwhite
The local fish wrap had a front page article today about the perks local CEOs are getting. It was quite the laundry list of unnecessary extravagance.
I keep hoping that the steady drip, drip, drip of truth will finally break through even the super dense skulls of the teabaggers and they will finally turn their anger against those justly deserving.
It took the destruction of the country to drill through the slavers ignorance, I hope we don’t have to go that far now but think it might.
jehrler
Sorry to bother, but can someone explain what the phrase “illustrious ina cheat” means. Is it Latin?
My Google-Fu seems weak as I am unable to get any definitions or explanations of this.
Thanks.
Dennis G.
@aimai:
This:
is how your modern Conservative/glibertarian/Teabagger defines “American Exceptionalism”.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai:
So, forget three, or even two, crop rotation, let’s party like we are pre-Roman?
Father Tyme
A very interesting read happens when you substitute “woman” for Negro in this excellent article.
asiangrrlMN
@jehrler: Rereading the sentence, I think it’s supposed to be, “…illustrious is a cheat….” Hope that helps.
piratedan
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): true Max and I am probably a bit too harsh on Little Mac here as well. He did have the love of his troops and he did instill in them a sense of pride that Meade (and later Grant) were able to use to good advantage. I think part of it also comes down to the legacy of Lee, was Lee that good or were the generals he opposed that bad? Some of both? I do fall into the school of thought that with the advantages that were inherent with the command of the Army of the Potomac that Lee was blessed by the Union’s inability to find the right man for the job for so long. I do believe that Lee made his own luck in many cases and in this regard, that luck was also tied up in the list of commanders that he faced before he got to Grant, while not a charismatic sort, had a firm grasp of logistics and how to apply them.
Chris
@piratedan:
Wasn’t a lot of it circumstance? Lee was “good” in the first two years of the war because he was fighting on the defensive, on his own soil. Twice, the South reversed that situation by going on the offensive: both times (Antietam and Gettysburg) they failed. Seems like his skills weren’t that different from those of his Yankee counterparts.
(And I wonder what the fuck possessed him to do Pickett’s charge. Having seen Yankee generals waste their own men that way at Fredericksburg, how would he not know better than to try the same thing himself?)
jehrler
@asiangrrlMN:
Thought that might be it, but you never know with old style writing and their use of Latin.
Thanks.
Observer
@Chris:
The only thing the Civil War did is kill a lot of people and allow Northern white liberals to feel a misplaced sense of moral superiority in “freeing” black people.
Looking around the modern world, you’ll notice that no other rich country has slavery and hasn’t for over 100 years. Northerners want me to believe that somehow the Southern US would have been the lone place in the entire modern world to go against the massive tide of emancipation that took swept through the “Establishment” in western civilization.
Blacks don’t owe Northerners anything and it’s tiring to listen to the sanctimony.
Davis X. Machina
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): State personal-freedom acts at direct variance with federal fugitive-slave laws were passed in several northern states, and this was trumpeted by secessionists as more evidence of The Conspiracy.
So you remember correctly.
Chris
Incidentally, Krugman also had a Civil War post a few days ago (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/road-to-appomattox-blogging/). Which he followed up on a few posts later by posting the YouTube clip of the fight for Little Round Top at Gettysburg.
Didn’t completely agree with the first post, loved the second one. The cream of the South’s Warrior-Gentleman class thwarted in one morning by a college professor from New England. You gotta love it.
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: Whole lotta turpentine burners from East Bumfuck, Alabama shooting at a whole lotta fishermen from Nothingport, more like.
Show me an all-officer war, and I’ll get a lawnchair, a cooler, and sit down to watch it.
piratedan
@Chris: Well Lee (and especially Jackson) made good use of the defensive advantages, i.e. interior lines, ability to live off the land, knowledge of the terrain, the morale boost of “fighting for their homes”. Lee also had a better understanding of his corps commanders capabilities and they an idea of what to do to press the advantage on the battlefield, I would even go so far as to say that his lieutenants were also superior to their counterparts. Guys like Stuart and Jackson could be counted on for maximum mayhem and intelligence gathering. Longstreet, Hill, and McLaws were aggressive in the field and could be counted on to seize the tactical advantage once it was achieved. While on the North, with commanders being changed after each debacle a sense of continuity was lost and with the guys at the top suffering through their own foibles. Plus you have the advantage of Lee knowing his opponents, after all, he went to school with many of them and they fought alongside each other in the Mexican-American conflict and his ability to size up his opponent and exploit those weaknesses (be it through aggressiveness or audacity or working on flaws in the field) helps to establish his legend. The maguffin is that there are so few broad conflicts that give you the ability to have this kind of insight into your opponents.
Brachiator
@Dennis G.:
Very good stuff about Stephens, but again you go to far in trying to localize American racism as primarily Confederate, and in drawing a direct line from the Confederates to the Republicans and the Tea Party People, as odious as they are.
And by any measure you would have to add Marxism, and the fellow traveling nuttiness of American communists to examples of rigid magical thinking.
@Observer:
No one knows how long the South would have held onto slavery, which was written into its constitution. Longer than Brazil, which didn’t formally end slavery until 1888?
And then, there is this, in the modern world:
Granted, this is not the same thing as slavery officially sanctioned by a government, but still it is hard for some people to give up old habits.
nancydarling
@Brachiator: I would add to this what went on in the Jim Crow south until fairly recently. For sure it was still going on in the 1940s, not sure about the 1950s. Local sheriffs arrested people on all sorts of trumped up charges and then hired inmates out on prison work gangs. Not exactly slavery, butt close enough.
J
@Observer: This is a truly perverse view to take of events. The policy of Lincoln and the Republicans before secession was to prevent the spread of slavery to the new states coming into being in the expectation that in the fullness of time it would be abolished peacefully and voluntarily in the states were it was legal (in the way Observer seems to think was inevitable). The reason that policy wasn’t put into effect was secession.
Jay C
@Observer:
Well, thank you Johnny Reb, for putting us uppity Yankees in our place! How dare we read and interpret history according to events that actually happened, rather than the wishful-thinking revisionism of violent sectionalists! How sanctimonious!
One doesn’t really need to have to delve into alt-history fiction to believe that in the event that the Confederacy had managed to somehow ensure its survival as an independent nation (or even renegotiated some sort of re-integration into the Union) after engaging in a bloody Civil War fought mainly for the preservation of racist slavery, that they just might have proved a tad slow to jump on the Emancipation bandwagon. Maybe in a few decades; maybe by 1900 or so the social anachronism of slavery might have proved (eventually) to be too much of an embarrassment; but it’s hard to imagine that a “country” which had spent so much blood and treasure for their “peculiar institution” would give it up so easily. If at all.
And JFTR, most of the “massive tide of emancipation” in Western nations had already peaked by the 1860’s: most European nations had done away with the legal underpinnings of human chattel slavery decades previously: the US and Brazil were the outliers in allowing it at that late date.
Brachiator
@nancydarling:
Ah, you touch on the convict lease system:
This despicable practice is the background to August Wilson’s great play, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which in turn was inspired by the real history behind a famous blues tune.
Black men would be arrested for minor infractions, such as illegal dice games, and end up working for seven years on prison chain gangs, leased out for free for various construction projects. The practice was not finally ended until 1928.
Son Sims Four – Joe Turner Blues (1942)
nancydarling
@Brachiator: You are correct about convict lease ending in 1928. However, according to Wiki, the “chain gang” system flourished until 1955.
Jay C
BTW, while surfing Wikipedia for info on Alexander Stephens, I came upon the following interesting item: it’s not dated, but cited to “1865”, and the title says it all:
What I Really Said in the Cornerstone Speech
In which old Alex backpedals a bit on his previous interpretation of the original Founders’ attitudes towards slavery, and makes a few feeble attempts at revisionism about the “conditions” under slavery — but still can’t help getting back to stressing the basics of the issue:
And of course, closes with the usual blame-shifting:
grandpajohn
@Observer: Well as we know it is the winners who write the history of conflicts, we have all heard of Andersonville but how many have heard of Utica? and the bleachers for people to watch the prisoners scramble to catch rats?
Mr Stagger Lee
There was a Confederate General Patrick Cleburne who suggested that the CSA conscript black soldiers into the Confederate Army on the promise to free them after the war.
Here was the reply by none other than Howell Cobb another Georgian
Omnes Omnibus
@Observer: You are correct that slavery probably would have ended on its own at some point. Where you go astray, however, is in your suggestion that the war was fought to end slavery. It was not. It was fought by the South to preserve slavery against what was perceived as hostility toward it in the North and policies which Southerners believed would hasten its end. It was fought by the North to preserve the Union. It did, as you state, kill a large number of people, but it preserved the Union and, incidentally, ended slavery (probably 20-30 years earlier than would otherwise have happened). Was the price worth it? You appear think not, but I would posit that yours is a minority opinion.
grandpajohn
@Jay C: Ahhh someone else who needs reminding that history and the facts that make it up is written by the winners of conflicts, not the losers.
Observer
@Jay C:
You missed the point:
1) if the North had just let the South go there would have been no Civil War and presumably, just like every other Western country in the world, the South would have ended it eventually. So the “alt-history” starts without a war not after one.
2) Brazil has never been considered part of “Western” civilization. And they’ve never really been a rich country. Manifest destiny and all that.
In the *Western* world, the outcome of blacks are the worst in the USA than in any other country. That is, if you’re black, it’s better to live in Canada, UK, France or practically any other place in the West than in the US. Blacks live on average about 10 years longer in those countries than in the US.
So again, Blacks don’t Northerners anything.
And again, after 150 years you’d think that Northerners would be tired of trying to be thought of as saviors but nooooo, the condescension still exists and is still strong today. You have to sort of wonder why that is.
Living on average 10 years longer elsewhere. think about that.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@Observer:
Your prickhead ancestors (including your skanky great-grandmammy) were forefront in ensuring that freedmen couldnt participate in the economic or political life of your own communities. And those who weren’t actively instigating oppression couldn’t muster the fucking courage allegedly a part of the filth they call Christian faith to step forward and say “no”, even in our lifetimes.
Fuck you and the filthy stain you call a culture and family tree.
Cermet
@Incoherent Dennis SGMM: What? You mean like in “Fast Food Nation” when the author describes the line foreman (for a meat packing company) who fought so bitterly against unionization for the company and always was a “worker” media gave face time to about the evils of these unions? Then after the union was driven away, the asswipe worker finally badly hurt his back at the company on the job and was unable to work any longer – in graditude to his years of anti-union service, the management terminated his job and all his income and he got no benefits (surely, that socilism SS disability saved his worthless ass): the company disposed of him exactly like the garbage he was.
No, until they come for these religious nut jobs and middle class stupids, they will vote against their own interest and then, blame the liberals for not saving them!
Omnes Omnibus
@Yevgraf (fka Michael): FWIW I believe, from previous encounters, that Observer is African-American or, if not American, of African ancestry.
Observer
@Omnes Omnibus: I know mine is the minority opinion, no pun intended.
But there’s two reasons for that:
1) Southerners will never admit that the war was about slavery so my thoughts don’t make sense in their context.
2) Northerners (especially liberals) (along the lines of Mistermix’s NYC foodie starvation post of a few days) need to always think of themselves are morally superior to everyone else so there’s no place for the thought that they killed 600,000 fellow Americans for nothing. The need to feel like they “saved” or “protected” or “freed” blacks is strong and let’s just say I’ve met lots of whites who assume blacks owe them something for being “freed” and for not being a Republican. So it’s just used a bargaining chip in fights with Republicans.
So neither side’s psychology will let the thought creep in.
shortstop
@Omnes Omnibus: And he loooooves his new governor, Rick Snyder.
henqiguai
@nancydarling (#88):
Trust me, Jim Crow was alive and still thriving in the 60’s.
Omnes Omnibus
@Observer: Again, I am saying that people believe, and believed, at the time that the preservation of the Union was a worthwhile goal. I have two great great grandfathers who fought in the war and I am sure that preservation of the Union was the cause for which they fought. I doubt that they had what we we would consider particularly enlightened view on racial issues. Letters that we have from them during the war make no mention of the issue of slavery, but rebels, rebellion, and the Union are mentioned.
Cermet
@Chris: Lee was in fact a rather bad general – read :
http://clevelandcivilwarroundtable.com/articles/comment/why_grant_won.htm
and you will see the truth.
That said, Lee had his moments (like many bad generals often did – how else did most get where they were?) but most bad generals never had such loser generals to fight against – and so many in a row. Nor get such lucky breaks (really – Like when the Federal General ordered all his troops over a narrow bridge in range of even the light cannons of the confederates and these same troops followed orders (sub-commanders, that is) and crossed that f’ing bridge and died in vast numbers even though anyone could walk through that stream over most of its length!?
Really, and all Lee ever did was barely defeat the army attacking – that is, he never, ever could defeat it in detail but only enough to win the battle so the enemy came back month after month year on and year out – Lee just simply sucked.)
opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland
@Omnes Omnibus: Same in most of my family including the ones from North Carolina, Missouri, and Arkansas, with the exception of the Canadian faction: they came to Chicago from Toronto and signed up, not for the Union but because they were against slavery. Twelve brothers of which six came here just for that cause.
Omnes Omnibus
@Observer:
In my high school history classes in central Wisconsin, we dealt with the causes of the Civil War and, guess what, ending slavery was mentioned as a very minor cause. The reasons are taught.
Lincoln was faced with a dilemma, let the South go and accept the the U.S. was a temporary voluntary association of independent states or go to war to keep the South from seceding. Also, incidental or not, the war resulted in the slaves being freed. Speculation as to when or if they would have otherwise been freed is somewhat immaterial since the war did result in their freedom.
themann1086
@piratedan: Glad you mentioned this; Turtledove is one of my favorite writers (even though, as someone mentioned above, he can be fairly formulaic and predictable) simply because his alternate history “feels” real. I actually just recently finished the series (even though I started it 8 years ago), and as a Philly native… damn (I won’t post spoilers, but seriously, I freakin’ cried I was so upset).
Actually, I use to troll with a blog written by a character named “Jake Featherston” and post the most crazy, fascist things I could and see how much agreement I could get from B-list wingnut blogs. I gave up after one of them linked to my call to start systematically murdering liberals approvingly. It was too depressing.
Dennis G.
@Chris:
I think that Bobby Lee is the most over rated character in American history. He has benefited from about 150 years of myth making and hype. He was an effective General in some campaigns and an awful one in others. He made a series of errors that resulted in deaths that can be counted in tens of thousands. He was a racist who enjoyed whipping his slaves. He was a coward after the war who sought the praise of myth and let truth tellers like Longstreet dangle in the wind. And on top of it all he was a traitor to his Country and a man without honor.
He really was a piece of work.
Cheers
Brachiator
@nancydarling:
Very true. Appreciate the clarification.
@Observer:
How many years of “eventually” do you think that black people were supposed to endure?
And your hypothetical is not only meaningless, it ignores the cold hard facts of American racism. The South could not simply go it’s own way. The Confederates did not simply want to contain slavery within its territories, it wanted slaveholder’s rights to be respected everywhere, in territories and in new states.
And as I noted before, since slavery was bound up in the Confederate constitution, ending it would be difficult. Here is one especially chilling passage:
Who knows how history would have turned. The South might have tried to annex Cuba or even Mexico in order to keep slavery going.
You really need to stop making stuff up. This is just sad.
There is an additional irony here in that some Southerners went to Brazil after the Civil War because they desperately needed to live in a land where slavery existed.
Do you know anything about the sad fate of most blacks who went to Canada via the Underground Railroad?
I agree with you here, but I don’t see that this is especially relevant to the Civil War. And since black people fought as hard for their freedom as anyone else, what exactly is your point here?
nancydarling
@Observer: I think white folks have a longer life expectancy in those countries too.
Dennis G.
@henqiguai:
Word!
nancydarling
@henqiguai: I was talking about convict leasing and chain gangs. I know too well what goes on in the south today. Can’t remember the name of the town in east Texas that had a big banner sign over Main Street proclaiming “The Blackest Land and the Whitest People” that wasn’t taken down until some time in the 60s. I had a young black patient in L.A. who had a golf scholarship to a university in Florida. His family was upper middle class and his Georgia grandmother was well-to-do. He told me every time he drove to GA to see his grandmother, he would be hassled by southern cops and sheriffs who would wonder aloud to him how a n****r could afford a car like the one he drove.
Tehanu
@flukebucket:
Absolutely not true. If anyone said that, it would have been Phil “No good Indian except a dead Indian” Sheridan, not Sherman. Sherman had the usual class and race prejudices of his day, but he was neither a bigot nor a war criminal — the white Southern death rate during the March Through Georgia, for example, was 0.0001%. The South hates Sherman to this day because he hit them in the pocketbook, which is what they really cared about. Grant, on the other hand, who oversaw the mass slaughter of the war in Virginia, gets a pass because it was perfectly OK to kill their sons as long as you left their money alone.
piratedan
@henqiguai: I believe it was 1979, the year I graduated High School, that the billboard outside of Smithfield-Selma, North Carolina that indicated that the KKK welcomes you to town was finally brought down.
Tehanu
@Observer:
if the North had just let the South go there would have been no Civil War
The North could not “just let the South go” — not when that would have meant cutting its own throat by letting a hostile foreign power control all exports from the Midwest via the Mississippi River. Personally I would gladly slice the old Confederacy off the continent and let it float out to sea, never to drag down the rest of civilization again, but that alas is not a practical response to the general fuckheadedness ruling in most of the area to this day under the “guidance” of the Greedy Oligarchs Party.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Congratulations. It’s only April 3, 2011, and you have made what is going to be the most lazy, self-deluded comment on the intertrons this year, if not this decade.
Never been considered “Western”? It was founded by the westernmost country in Europe! Never really been rich? Granted, there was little in terms of gold or silver, but what the sugar trade returned to Lisbon a few centuries allowed the aristocracy in Portugal to live in exceeding comfort.
henqiguai
@nancydarling (#114):
Okay fine. Um, should I mention that a cousin was railroaded into a North Carolina prison and did some ‘chain gang’ road work, in the 70’s ? And these New Englanders think that North Kill’a N… uh, Carolina is just a wonderful place to which to migrate away from these (now comparatively mild, even compared to when I moved here a couple decades back) New England winters.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Cermet:
Have you ever seen the terrain? More specifically. the creek bed and the sloping nature of the terrain on the Sharpsburg side of Antietam Creek? Had Burnside tried to cross his corps at any point other than the ford (which was detected too late in the day), the results would have been similar to those at the Crater. The banks of that creek, when the water is low, are about 6′ high when the water level is low, and once a lucky soldier scaled the banks, he’s then facing an uphill slog.
The problem at the bridge wasn’t one of tactics, but of timing. Burnside dallied in getting into position and in finding the ford to the south of the bridge.
henqiguai
This is going back to #116; sloppy editing wiped it out when I cleaned up another faux pas.
Saw Dr. Loewen give a presentation, primarily targeted at educators (my spouse, not me; having to spend all day with other people’s
idiot spawnlittle darlins would kill me), on Sundown towns James Loewen’s “Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism”. Yep, I remember both the signs (saw one in my wanderings) and the sirens; oh, and impromptu conversations with local constabulary (though not about the expensive car; knew guys to whom that happened but not me – I was piloting a Pinto (humming a bar from the Brothers Johnson song).Kolohe
“Not that I have any display to make”
Hey, at least Stephens was against Powerpoint. (Unlike the other side)
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Tehanu:
You beat me to it.
There’s a reason that the Port of New Orleans remains vital to Midwestern agriculture to this day: It remains cheaper to float grain on a barge from Minneapolis to New Orleans than it is to move that grain overland by train or truck from Fargo to Minneapolis.
piratedan
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): well Burnside also had requested support from McClellan to help him secure the bridge, which was promised but never arrived, if I remember it properly.
Lee used what he had to great effect, his commanders, his troops, his tactics. We also have to acknowledge that the bulk of the West Point graduates were from southern states and as such, the South’s officer corp was better regarded. Plus, in the infancy of Lincoln’s presidency, he didn’t have much influence in the War Department, as such, the folks in charge were quite human, either old and frail (Scott) or subject to cronyism (Halleck), plus the first Minister of War, Cameron, worked actively against Lincoln and his policies until he was shuffled off the presidential cabinet.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@piratedan:
IIRC, this isn’t quite true. What the Confederacy had that the Union didn’t was more officers who made careers in the military (well, the Army, because the cream of the officer corps in the Navy was predominantly Northern, with the notable exception of eastern Tennessee native Farragut, who remained with the Union), where a very large portion of the Northern West Point grads left the Army to put their engineering degrees to use in the antebellum private sector.
piratedan
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): perhaps I should have clarified that many of the officers that joined the Confederacy had distinguished themselves previously in the Mexican-American War and were serving as careerists, I discounted those that had graduated and moved on to private life that wound up being recalled to duty or volunteering for duty. Granted, the Union had more officers to draw upon although I’m not sure that they had the edge in those that had already seen combat.
grandpajohn
@Tehanu: the main reason the south hates Sherman is because he conducted warfare that today would be classified as terrorism, A war not against an army but mainly against women and children the only troops against him were mostly teenagers and old men.
a war of pillaging and raping and burning, but of course the irregulars that made up much of his army, did manage to loot the homes they burned and the women and children they savaged. Note the excerpt above in someones post about Shermans idea of how to conduct war
But again I note my previous statement, the history of wars is written by the winners not the losers
Omnes Omnibus
@grandpajohn:
Link to a reputable source?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@piratedan:
Well, both sides had quite a few vets of the Mexican-American War. What the Confederacy had was officers who fought in conflicts like the Indian wars of the 1850s. Take a look at the old 2nd US Cavalry, formed in 1855, that was fighting the Comanche in Texas: In the future Confederates column were Bobby Lee, A.S. Johnson, Van Dorn, Kirby Smith, Hood and Fitz Lee; the future Unionists from the 2nd Cav were Pap Thomas (my personal hero of the war) and George Stoneman.
grandpajohn
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): So if Tenahu got his desire and all the south was cut off from the rest of the country, I guess the midwest would be fucked then wouldn ‘t they? Seems like southerners are not the only one to exhibit hate and bile are they? You Know as the bible says A soft answer turneth away wrath. Too bad the North didn’t understand this. Perhaps if they had used the same philosophy against the defeated South that we did after WW II against the Japanese and Germans , we might of had similiar results rather than 100 + years of hatred and turmoil.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@grandpajohn:
This is mostly horseshit.
While it’s true that Billy the Goat (not my favorite, and that’s understating my opinion) didn’t fight against an army during the March too the Sea (the fault of John Bell Hood, who moved in the opposite direction), he targeted not the civilians lives but their lifestyles, via economic destruction not much unlike what had been visited upon the Georgians cousins- whether their sympathies were with Richmond or Washington- in Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky in the previous three years.
grandpajohn
@Omnes Omnibus:Just like the links from all the other sources with opposing opinions. Burning the homes of civilians,and stealing all their worthwhile possessions, their livestock and sources of food leaving them homeless with out food shelter and any way to get them, wouldn’t be considered acts of terror.Burning entire towns, see the burning of Columbia SC. Now these acts are documented, hell
Sherman himself proclaimed them as his tactics what other sourcing would be needed. But I repeat myself the winners write the history books, the losers only have their memories of living through the times
Observer
@Brachiator:
Been out all afternoon but appreciate the detailed response,
We’re talking about large scale demographics *today* not what happened to people in the Underground Railroad.
You’d need to look up the thread further to see what I was originally responding to.
But if I had to sum it up it would be this: whites, especially Northern liberal ones, should stop patting themselves on the back about “freeing” the slaves as if they were better than the Republicans because of it. It’s very tiring to listen to sanctimonious liberals fling charges of racism at the drop of a hat. The sanctimonious NPR guy on videotape come to mind. Just tired of it. Maybe instead of preening about how much better they are than republicans, maybe they should do something about the wide racial discrepancies in outcomes in US society.
Like I say, blacks do much much better in Canada or the UK. There has to be some reason for that and it definitely involves liberals.
So regarding blacks, slaves and freedeom, nobody gets brownie points from me for the Civil War. That’s what I was originally responding to.
Omnes Omnibus
@grandpajohn: So you are saying you don’t have any links? Okay.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@grandpajohn:
And more horseshit.
Wanna know why the comparison is invalid? The Battle of Berlin. Firebombings of Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo. Atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The better comparison is to the treatment of Germany at the end of WW I, the civilian population of that nation never having to have cowered for shelter as the bombs were destroying their homes, neighbors and families. Had the Confederate leadership been hung as were the Nazis and Japanese fascist leaders at the end of WWII…
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Observer:
STFU, you dishonest asshole.
Omnes Omnibus
@Observer:
It definitely involves liberals? How so? Conservatives and race baiting have no part?
I don’t recall anyone asking for brownie points from you. What happened, happened.
grandpajohn
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Yes and when he targeted their lifestyles he did it with the burning and looting of the civilians living in those territories All the able bodied men were out fighting and to deny the history of the rape and pillage and looting of civilians mostly women and children as he marched through Georgia and South Carolina is bullshit. IN Shermans on words
Read about the burning of Columbia and other battles in SC that were against ragtag militia companies. Try reading some history books that describes the war and aftermath from an unbiased point. I am southerner have lived here all my life and am a Democrat, I an not a defender of slavery, and I despise the current politics of the south, B but being a southerner I am answering the question of why over a hundred years later, the name of Sherman is still despised in the south
grandpajohn
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):Your reply makes no sense, but since it is obvious that you have already answered all questions to your self satisfaction I will relinquish you the floor and your bile and bitterness about things that happen well over a century ago
Omnes Omnibus
@grandpajohn:
I will take you, personally, at your word regarding your politics, etc., but I have to say that being despised in a region that venerates Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jefferson Davis could be seen as a compliment.
piratedan
@grandpajohn: okay a couple of things…. Sherman’s march to the see was a campaign levied to reduce the South’s ability to continue to wage war. It was a war against personal property and infrastructure in order to hasten the defeat of Southern forces in the field. It brought home the reality of war to the people of the South, since the vast majority of it was fought in Northern Virginia and up and down the river systems of the US.
You want to call that Terrorism, I’m not gonna argue with that application of the definition… but if you want to imply that the South had too heavy a hand imposed against it during reconstruction, then imho you’re talking out of your ass. The fact that we had and continue to have multiple generations of racial tension in this country and the advent of the civil rights movement in the 60’s was due to the fact that the South continued to implement Jim Crow laws and had restored racial segregation in deed as well as in name. Does this mean that the North was a shining paragon of racial tolerance, hardly. Yet burning crosses, intimidating social rights volunteers, arson of black churches are pretty much signature southern events.
I grew up south of the Mason-Dixon line, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Each generation some inroads are made, but the simple fact that people still drive around with confederate flag decals on their cars and flags in their yards and that we STILL have elected officials attempting to whitewash the slavery angle of the Civil War shows that perhaps too light a hand was used versus too heavy of one. The glorification of Nathan Bedford Forrest and RE Lee as “national” heroes kind of alludes to the belief that the “good cause” is still just in the eyes of many white folks in the south.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@grandpajohn:
That’s because you’ve predicated your argument upon the false assumption that the Confederate citizenry suffered deprivations on par with those suffered by the German and Japanese people during WWII.
I’m saying that Reconstruction failed because, unlike those 20th century Japanese and German societies, the Confederates learned absolutely no lessons about the folly of their own bellicose tendencies or the hubris of their superiority complex. I’m saying that like Wilson 54 years later in regards to Germany, Andrew Johnson didn’t beat the much needed lessons into the Confederate psyche, instead allowing them to continue to go on espousing the myth that their problems emanated not from themselves but from scalawags and newly freed slaves.
Wolfdaughter
I would have to agree that Observer’s comment about Brazil was off the mark. But Observer still has something to contribute.
The good outcome of the Civil Was was to end formal, official slavery, and to preserve the Union more-or-less intact. I personally would like to see a revisionist history where Lincoln was not assassinated, finished his second term, and hopefully exerted a somewhat calming influence over the young Republican Party, ameliorating some of the worst offenses of the Radical Republicans, whose punitive attitudes toward the South set back relations and decent reconstruction for decades. Lincoln might have been able to continue exerting a calming influence even after no longer in office, because as a victorious wartime president and the 1st one of his party, he would have had tremendous cache.
Observer, you are correct that Northerners sometimes do have a condescending attitude toward the South. It’s true that African Americans (I hate that term) don’t owe liberals or Northerners anything, if you mean today. I would also point out that my great-great-grandparents met while he was in jail for his abolitionist activities and she, a p.k., was visiting inmates as part of her pastoral duties. They ran a successful underground railroad for escaping slaves in Ohio and risked their lives doing so, in the belief that one human being enslaving another is a terrible wrong, against God’s will.
Incidentally, great-great grandaddy’s name was Lincoln, my maiden name, and YES, we are related though distantly. I have no idea if my ancestors actually ever met Abe Lincoln.
Observer, the U.S. has unquestionable dealt extremely poorly with non-whites in this country. Is it better than 150 or 200 years ago? Yes. Is there room for improvement? HELL YES! Do any of us have all the answers as to how to improve? No. And the currents of history are extremely murky here.
But I would say this to you as you appear to dismiss all liberals: we are the ones working for improvement. The conservatives are either doing nothing or actively working to reverse progress, especially those of the TP persuasion, which unfortunately the Republican party is now dominated by. So consider carefully which political bedmates you choose.
Brachiator
@Observer:
Points noted. Thanks for taking the time to clarify.
I’ve noted my own issues with discussions that want to try to focus on the evil South rather than deal with American racism and its consequences.
I would disagree with you in part with respect to the fates of Underground Railroad era blacks in Canada, since much of this thread has been dealing with the Civil War. One might also deal with the question of why blacks were not allowed to enter Canada in larger numbers after the Civil War.
I find it interesting that blacks in Canada have done as well as they have, especially since some provinces decided to more or less conform to American segregation laws up through the 1940s, and a bit later.