Southern Hatred and Ignorance: A Stain on the Nation
If you imagine the South
as Chechnya and the North as Russia, or more germane, the North
continuing the British' traditional repression of the South's rural Scottish
and Irish, perhaps you can expand your worldview to acknowledge that
those who think they're on a mission from God are often the most
blinded and misguided and cruelest, and engender the least respect.
Item #1 from recent blog - "The South had horrible slavery, so everything Sherman did was justified." Okay. How exactly do you justify the fire bombing of Dresden? Obviously
the Germans were in the moral wrong, so we could do anything we wanted
to its citizens, correct? The Algerians tried to secede from France -
and lost something like 1.5 million for their "treason", considering
Algeria was an integral part of France. Hussein at one time invaded Kuwait and had weapons of mass destruction, so obviously we were justified in invading Iraq and having Hussein hanged. I love it when GOP and Democrat talking points segue so easily!!!
Item #2: I don't know the figures, but I imagine that most Southerners accept slavery as the major issue for the Civil War - just not always the *ONLY* one. Which seems to be beyond the pale for some - that instead the South should grovel, accept slavery as the only reason, acknowledge that they're evil and genetically stupid, and continue in prostration until Jesus returns or Universal Health Care, whichever comes second. It should be noted that it
was the northern states that started this practice in the first place. Massachusetts started its African slave trade in 1624 to go along with
its Indian slaves, and was the first state to legalize slavery - In 1641 Massachusetts becomes the first British colony to recognize
slavery as a legal institution. Connecticut follows in 1650, Maryland
in 1663, and New York and New Jersey in 1664. One source notes, "In 1703, 42 percent of New York's households had
slaves, much more than Philadelphia and Boston combined. Among the
colonies' cities, only Charleston, South Carolina, had more." Virginia actually tried to ban the slave
trade in the mid-1700's but was prohibited by its British masters -
slave trade was banned by all the colonies within 3 years of
independence, with unfortunately a window of 20 years that let the
South greatly expanded it after the cotton gin, an expansion that led to its unfortunate reliance and demise.
Why the sudden desire for slaves from Africa in the 1600's? The indentured slave system, that of putting white Europeans under slave conditions to come to America, started falling apart. White indentured slaves were rebelling and Native American slaves in the North were no longer sufficient, so something more forceful and plentiful was required, and seeing as Britain's slave trade in the Caribbean was booming, the trend caught on.
A brief history of indentured slavery in North America.
Now, I can't quite recall any Northerners taming their criticism of
the South with their own guilt in helping start the practice (oh wait,
I guess I just did, in light of some of my mixed Northern roots), and I don't
recall Northerners extending their harsh attitudes about Southerners
to the British as well, who managed to carry on a much larger slave
trade in the Caribbean, or towards the fancy French who populated Haiti, Guadaloupe and French Guiana with slaves, not to mention Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil) - only 10% of slavery in the Americas occurred in the US. Quite selective hysteria here. A shame Russian colonies around San Francisco didn't survive, or they could have introduced Siberian-style feudalism to our shores as well - would make for quite a melting pot to go with our Chinese workers-not-citizens.
And I'm sure the United States was a very moral nation concerned about human rights in the early 1800's as they stole Florida, Texas, and most of the West from Spain/Mexico in bloody, brutal wars (read "Blood Meridian" as a fictional attempt to express the lawlessness), as they drove the Indians out of the North, and marched them out of the South onto reservations, as they continued to wipe out Western natives up to the end of the 1800's with guns, whiskey, intentionally delivered smallpox, and wiping out the Native American's means of subsistence, done so well that Hitler used it as a fine example of genocide in Mein Kampf. [Curiously enough, we would have invaded further south into Mexico, but any new territory would have been south of the Mason-Dixon, thus would have entered as slave states, a tip in balance the Northerners couldn't stomach no matter how much Guadalajara called. An abhorrence of slavery, or simply an abhorrence of more power to the slave state coalition? Fickle thing, this morality.]
So while some conclude that there was only one issue, the South's clinging to slavery, others might note that North-South competition, hatred, misunderstanding and economic divides (industry vs. agriculture, urban vs. rural) had persisted for long periods and certainly did not all have to do with slavery. Think of attitudes towards West Virginia, which did not secede and did not have a large slave population - but the butt of all too many in-breeding jokes and the like. This is our us vs. them culture, and we're blind to our own ignorance and hatred.
#3 - The South was quite patient in trying to come to a peaceful withdrawal from the US, with Ft. Sumter coming 4 months after secession, with the North coming to resupply the fort, with a bloodless first battle. Absurd that a region would no longer want to belong to a nation, or that having a foreign fort occupied in the middle of its major port would disturb it? I'm sure Cuba is happy to have us in Guantanamo, and Spain is happy to leave Gibraltar to the British, and the East European countries loved Russian troops staying put in their barracks even after the Wall fell. But it was Lincoln's insistence that joining the Union was irreversible that put the whammy on any compromise. Till Death Do Us Part. No safehouse for this marriage. For those who think Lincoln's attitude entirely proper, the attempts of the Kurds at Independence must pain them, or the Pakistanis and Sri Lankans leaving India, or Scotland obtaining its own government, or the US breaking Panama away from Colombia. In fact, if you buy Lincoln's notion that the Union must be preserved at all costs, then you can see right through to the clarity of Saddam Hussein's actions, that the Sunnis in the South and the Kurds in the North had created treason by using the wars with Iran and America as diversions to revolt, that they threatened the sanctity of the Iraqi Union, and they had to be gassed and otherwise brought into line, or the Republic would fall. Same with Milosevic - faced with Slovenia and Croatia and Kosovo and parts of Bosnia trying to secede - peoples who had voluntarily joined Yugoslavia after World War I - it was only natural that he would use less force than Sherman did across the South in order to maintain the inviolate agreement of Yugoslavian Union. The peaceful split of Czechoslovakia in 1992 must be abhorrent, just as the demise of the Soviet Union - how could they let treason go unpunished?
#4 Using the higher Tuskeegee estimates on black repression (about 50% over other ones), some 5000 blacks and 2000 whites were lynched over 70 years, with perhaps 20% outside of the South. Presumably everyone is familiar with these numbers, and can put them in perspective of the number killed in just 30 years of Northern Ireland's Troubles (3500, 60% civilian), Palestine (roughly 500 per year), deaths by Taser (409+ in North America in 10 years), murders in America (peak 24,500 in 1993), and general war stats that everyone should be familiar with, just to answer those Jeopardy questions about who killed more, Mao or Stalin, Pinochet or Idi Amin. Of course there might be a few US-based atrocities to count up, but the more fun stuff like how we helped overthrow legally elected Latin American governments to suit our fruit companies probably doesn't make the list, nor the foreign casualties from our inability to figure out our drug problem. I'm not excusing lynchings by any means, nor limiting its harassment effect to just those killed, just lining it up with comparable reprehensible behavior and curious how many people have a good sense of its magnitude, sensational movies like Mississippi Burning aside.
#5 - For all those concerned about how Bush shredded the Constitution over the last 8 years, it should be interesting to note that Lincoln was elected to and entered office promising to not uphold the Constitution that he had just sworn himself to uphold. It's a peculiar case, and it's not like Lincoln was in any way consistent of his support for black human rights or freedom as he was in pushing through his political positioning on the issue (which split the opposition quite nicely). While it's hard to argue that slavery was correct, in terms of US politics it's a bit of a quandary to argue that a right guaranteed in the Constitution should be ignored without Supreme Court overturn or an Amendment to support - something Lincoln didn't bother to introduce until after the war was essentially won - i.e. the chickenshit wouldn't risk losing his slave-owning allies like Maryland over something as simple as principle, and the oft-praised Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the secessionist Confederacy, not in the Union.
Now the recent wingnut threat to secede is over Obama spending too much and his supposed socialism, both irrelevant to the Constitution and easily countered if they simply bother to be sane enough to get their people elected - a strategy they haven't clued into yet. But what's the proper state reaction when the Chief Executive unilaterally decides and announces intent to violate the Constitution, whether you agree with that part of the Constitution or not? Is it a violation of marriage vows, an automatic annulment or grounds for divorce, or just cover up the black eyes and seek counseling or the comfort of a priest? If slavery was part of the Constitution, what right did abolitionists have to violate that Constitution, rather than choose the legal recourse of amending the Constitution? Should women have had the moral right to bombard Manhattan and cut a large swath through Pennsylvania countryside because they didn't receive the right to vote until 1920 and other rights until much later?
There, there's your Northern honor and self-righteousness in a nutshell. Too bad 150 years after that horrible war people haven't absorbed the horrid lessons for all to see, that as a growing nation we were full of some of the worst tendencies and vanities as a whole, not just the South, and that the issues like always have more complication than the Spielberg movie shows. Instead, it seems we as a nation just swallowed another myth, the infallible US as projected by the morally superior North. Yum, that's a tasty squalid diet.
If you're hungry you can dig around for more - I found an interesting treatise on common misperceptions of the Southern rail system, for example - not essential, but curious that our folklore remains so mistaken in basic details for such a well studied topic. For more tidbits and residual education, you can try out "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South" by Clint Johnson, a book I confess I haven't read much of, but looks to add a bit or a bite of (i.e. corrects) common wisdom about the South, and at least pokes some holes in the self-promoted image of Lincoln, and references this rather penetrating observations of one of the South's quirky enduring qualities:
"Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological." - Flannery O'Connor
The South recognizes it's a freak. It's just amazed the others don't recognize themselves in the mirror as well.
There's much much more to the story, of course, including some details I didn't know until recently about how anti-civil rights forces in the late 1800's managed to pack the Supreme Court to mangle and defang any progressive civil rights legislation and enforcement for the next 60-80 years - another one of those small details that never seem to make it into our Cliff Notes versions of The History of the U S of A. So if you find yourself caught up in hatred and ignorance of the South, just dig around - there's a lot to learn, a lot of guilt to share, a whole plethora of sick behavior from many factions and ethnic groups throughout our remote and recent past. Oddly enough, some of the more noble figures of the south - including LBJ and Clinton, but also myriads of lesser-known good hearts, are marginalized just to make the presentation simpler, more black-and-white. But there are no monopolies on truth, and is no big surfeit of ethical behavior, whatever our inflated self-opinions, only cases of better and worse instincts taken to their conclusions. We seem to be marginally above the rest at the best of times, and I hate to even hazard to rate things at the worst of times. Better just to try to swim with the best. And if we think we're going to build an enduring and inclusive coalition in this mess, we need to start exploring what it means to be really inclusive. To misquote Woody Allen, I wouldn't join a club that wouldn't have me as a member.
Great piece.
But I think you just called Abe out on a Memorial Day weekend. Once people are back from the BBQ, I'm expecting a rousing debate. Or at least a top-notch exchange of insults.
Just remember though. We're North of the North, ok? Like really North.
So far North we're actually more Southern, come to think of it.
May 24, 2009 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I seem to recall a bunch of y'all packed up in crates and sent around south to become southern, except with an even more outrageous French accent.
And what about all those Indian slaves you had? Guess you worked that all out.
May 24, 2009 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ummm, they were French, ok? They couldn't be trusted. They were friendly with the Indians. They wanted our stuff. They had guns. They told us they liked New Orleans. They started it. They wouldn't stop it. They swore at our King. They wouldn't swear to our King. They ignored us. They were spying on us. Listen, it was the shoes, the socks, the hats, the whole god-damn French thing.
Besides. It was Massachusetts whut done it. It Wasn't Me.
Next.
May 24, 2009 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like you've been practicing.
May 24, 2009 7:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Practicing what - guitar or excuses? The real rewards in life come from the latter, dude. Make sure to get your kids the right lessons.
If they ever need a tutor, you know who to call.
May 24, 2009 11:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
a southerner myself (second), an American (first), and a human (more first), I enjoy a rousing good defense of the slaveholding south as an enlightened beacon of rightous self-governance and lofty moral values - ha! if today's South weren't still such a backwater haven of the antithesis of the actual virtues mentioned above, then your case could possibly begin to hold water. unfortunately, though, the 'new' South's staunchest defenders (and its leaders) clearly haven't evolved very far.
despite the impossibility of justifying the unjustifiable, you do almost a credible job, Desidero, though your historical analogizing, which you seem to see as a potent rhetorical device, is your weakest element. both honest and dishonest writers can always find a good historical analogy to make their case, and they always overlook aspects within their arguments that tend to illustrate exactly the opposite of what they intend.
reading through the comments thread, however, your biggest weakness - one which to me certainly neutralizes any credibility you might have had - is your hostility and antagonism to disagreement, which makes my mind's eye see you as some sort of combination of Yosemite Sam and General P.T. Barnum Beauregard, jumping from one foot to the other and shooting off pistols into the sky and muttering under your breath about the unfairness of life.
1) get your history more comprehensively and truthfully straight, 2) your facts to align with at least a semblance of actual objectivity, 3) your temperament a lot less Charles Sumner, and 4) in a few years you might be able to reasonably make your case. for now, though, you do your "Great Cause" - ha - a Great Disservice.
Love,
News Nag
May 25, 2009 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, you go first?
May 24, 2009 11:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yo' Mama's kids were bad eggs.
Your turn.
May 24, 2009 11:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well done--lots of good points here. As someone who's never lived north of the Mason-Dixon line, I have a limited idea about the tacit assumptions people have about the American southeast.
But from what I can gather, it's essentially the worst kind of othering.
Whenever you develop an idea about another group of people in order to provide a foil for your own group and confirm your group's normalcy/correctness/superiority/etc., you're engaging in an intellectual laziness that has potentially severe social consequences. In going along with it, you lose track of who you really are, because you've defined yourself based on an imaginary version of who someone else is.
Sorry for my awkward prose; it's all knees and elbows today.
May 24, 2009 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I especially like elbows in political discussions, basketball and euchre, though I seldom get invited to card games.
May 24, 2009 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your essay is an objective look at all this
Objection. Presumes facts not in evidence.
I wouldn't mind so much, if there were a reasonable number of source materials cited - or at least links. Without knowing where you got this from, I don't have any means of assessing the bias of your sources, or their reputation as honest and objective persons - nor can I seek opposing views specifically pertinent to your sources. Given that I have studied this generally, and taken a closer look at one or two post-war programs, I am disinclined to accept your assertions at face value.
Sorry to nitpick, but 3 links amidst no less than 50 claims - makes my bullshit meter peg in the red.
And, just to throw a handful of 10ga shells into the fire - would you agree that the South would look radically different(culturally) today, if instead of re-integrating the citizenry and institutions(good and bad) back in to the Union, the North had instituted a comprehensive program of amputating half-feet and selective breeding amongst the whites of the Confederacy?
(I will assert that Massachusetts(nice British name there, huh?) would look radically different if when the Mayflower arrived, coastal peoples hadn't been recently devastated by European disease - and forced the religious extremists(aka Puritans) to accommodate, integrate or dominate(well, try).)
I feel confident suggesting that it would not have taken until the New Deal to get electricity to rural regions, had that been the case.
May 25, 2009 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Selective breeding vs. in-breeding, who comes out the winner? Lots of ifs, ands and buts in Reconstruction reconstruction - electric ruralification being just one. I don't think my references are that curious or extreme (mostly Wikipedia-type) - it's the analogies drawn to their logical (or illogical) conclusions - it's easy to view Lincoln in good light when he's on your side. The GOP enjoyed their push-through of power as well, though did stop short of half-foot amputations and a few other harsh measures.
May 25, 2009 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have never read anything like this before. Having been brought up in the south, I know that I got the southern "spin," and that I have read much of the other "truth" since that time. Your essay is an objective look at all this, and unlike the "uncomplicated" regional view, it shows that when things seem simple, you're probably missing something. Thanks for taking the time to put this together. I'm going to have to come back and read this a couple more times.
Here's another Woody Allen quote: "who me?"
May 24, 2009 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for taking the time to expand your thoughts from the comment in your previous post. Well, I definitely grew up a north easterner, and assumed all the cultural superiority you speak of Des. At one point in my life, I might have been considered a Northeastern supremest. Might have cheerily considered myself that as well. So I will wear that hair shirt. There are a lot of social norms that need to be shattered. Ethnocentrism runs much deeper than race, and perhaps the cultural divides between us will likely last longer still. I do think we, as Americans, have not been alone in our projection of cultural superiority/hegemony on portions of the world, so there should be lively debate on this topic in the future. So many of us are so convinced of America's political, cultural and moral superiority, that on some level I wonder if we are capable of this level of paradigm shift without being brought low. Sans that denouement, do we just continue down the path of one elite followed by another, and another?
May 24, 2009 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
The fighting in this thread is pathetic. There was more disagreement on that "Memorial Day Is Good" post. So let's get down to it.
Skynyrd sucks.
Ok. I don't really believe that. Besides, Skynyrd and Neil Young ended up all kissy-kissy anyway. And what with The Band and all, that whole upset's long forgotten.
Serious question. Honestly, I really do not get the whole "you can't break up the Union" bit. I'm cringing a bit just saying it - because my experience is Americans get riled over this question - but like you said, history's seen more than a few separations, so it's not like breaking the law of gravity. And we Canadians have had to do a wee bit of thinking on this one, concluding with, "If the Quebecois separate, we'll throw doughnuts at them, but that's pretty much likely the end of it. (Until the next hockey season.)"
More to the point, hadn't there been a War of Independence just a while back before this? When the Deities, Fates and assorted hangers on blessed the exit of these United States from some country or other than I can never quite remember the name of?
How does this work? Really. I'm askin'.
May 24, 2009 8:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem with breaking the union is nobody would want Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, so you'd have this Balkanized little pocket of crackers smack dab in the middle of two major east-west interstates. If we could figure out the logistics of that we might be able to lyse the rest of the country without rancor.
May 24, 2009 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, you could extend the New Jersey Turnpike in a giant W heading south, then north, then south then north all across the country avoiding them good ol' boy bantustans (i.e. Las Vegas would now be known as Exit 2356). I once read that you could fit 35 New Jerseys into one Texas. All I could think was, man would that stink!
May 24, 2009 11:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was thinking a skyway if we could get overflight rights. I don't think anything in Oklahoma is over 40 feet tall, but maybe that's my Southeastern superiority speaking.
May 25, 2009 1:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
I just want to say that my brother-in-law, who is truly one of the smartest and nicest people I know, participates in Civil War Re-inactments and wears a Rebel Uniform. Robert E Lee was an honorable man, and so were many of those who fought and died on both sides.
Considering the absurd waste of human potential, can we not come to the mutual agreement that this Civil War, and many others are a pathetic loss based on the failings of all of us? As long as men who are in their 5th or so decade decide to send children in their 2nd and 3rd decades to solve their differences of opinion, we will continue to fight.
May I suggest another paradigm? 20 year-olds should decide if and when we should go to war, but those who fight would have to be in their 50's or 60's. That way, no matter what the war-mongers would decide, the actual warriors would really have to decide if it was worth it. My bet: Not often! Those mature people, who already have families would say, "This isn't worth fighting over. Let's find another way."
Does anyone on the planet EARTH think that if Dick Cheney had to fight for this country he would actually have done it?
May 24, 2009 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent proposition!
May 24, 2009 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Honorable perhaps, but traitors nonetheless and of this there can be no debate. It is a fact, not an opinion.
May 25, 2009 12:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
So you show up - okay, so the Kurds were traitors that deserved to be gassed, and the Kosovars and Croatians were traitors that deserved to be annihilated, right? Actually all the Americans were traitors against the King!!! No one here gets out alive?
As for your beloved scorched earth policy, presumably it would have been okay for Robert E. Lee to head up the Garden State turning everything to ash, just to bring the realities of war home to the North. Kinda like the Russians did in Chechnya. Kinda like what we did in Vietnam. Kinda like what the Israelis do in the West Bank and Gaza.
And you didn't answer the question about the Constitution - why didn't Lincoln uphold or change the Constitution, since that was his job? He was a traitor to the Constitution as it read. Guess John Wilkes Booth was just carrying out summary justice. No harm, no foul.
May 25, 2009 2:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Desi,
Now you are just being willfully ignorant.
If your arguments are to hold up, then it would have to be the blacks, a racially distinct group, that would have wanted to secede for reasons of self-determination.
You keep trying to conflate that "self-determination" argument for the South's illegal pulling out of the constitution that they originally signed up to.
You can't tear up contracts just because the terms are now less favorable to you. That's why the South wanted to secede. They were losing influence in the federal government and were becoming an isolated region with respect to the growing country.
And to whine about the poor North putting down the rebellion in no uncertain terms is childish. If the South surrendered, there would have been no scorched earth policy... but in 1864 the South continued to see victory in sight. So much so, that Lincoln's re-election was not a certainty. Indeed, Sherman's march to the sea did much to allow for a Union victory. He took the war to the people who were supporting it.
If you don't want war, don't start it!
It's time for you to go read a real history book with a real editor and not just peruse the Internet.
May 25, 2009 2:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nonsense. Slavery was in the Constitution. The South had every right to secede if slavery was not upheld, ugly as it was. There was a Constitutional way around it that abolitionists did not manage to get. It was Northerners who introduced the 3/5th a human bit in the first place - the Southerners didn't get seriously interested in slavery until the cotton gin made it economically useful.
The Northern states signed the Constitution as well, and chose to ignore its contents when it suited them. And again, I differ with the idea that any contract can be in perpetuity, with no exit clause, especially dealing with people's freedom - that's slavery in itself - "you will remain in this union no matter how bad you feel you're treated, no matter what conditions, because your forebears signed a treaty".
May 25, 2009 2:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, Desi. The South had every right to fight the battle out in court as specified by the constitution. By the way, Dred Scott v Sanford did argue that slaves were slaves. It helped push the notion that you couldn't have a divided United States.
The reason that the abortion issue could never cause a civil war like that, despite similarities with the slavery issue, is that the supporters of one side or another are not regionally sectionalized.
May 25, 2009 2:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nonsense again, it can easily be heavily supported in the South for example due to religious reasons or regionally conservative attitudes. Look, I brought this subject up so people could re-think, not just mindlessly regurgitate the same old anti-South babble. The North and the South crawled through most of the same swamps to get to where we are today. We all have the stink of young empire on us.
May 25, 2009 3:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Finally, we are at the root of this blog. You have a stink on you and you wish to rid yourself of it by projecting it on everyone else.
Like the guilty GOP party trying to convince the rest of the country that they are no worse than the Dems (despite not bringing all this up until after they lost power), you are trying to convince all of us that any little problem in the North absolves the South of their rebellious actions.
Sorry, it doesn't work that way.
Don't know why you are self hating, perhaps you have guilt of your ancestors. Either way, the discussion is good only if you are rooted in historical fact. Unfortunately, your technique is simply deny anything that doesn't fit your pre-gotten-at conclusion.
May 25, 2009 3:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
You ignore the wishes and arguments of the Founding Fathers, basic issues about the rights of man and self-determination, you ignore the basic precepts of the Declaration of Independence, but you have the audacity and arrogance to pretend you're relying on "facts".
Governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. Pretty clear, eh clear thinker?
May 25, 2009 4:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, and if the majority said it was okay for the South to leave, they could have left.
You seem to be missing the fact that the majority of people didn't feel that the South could leave. That's the reason why the Union prevented the South from leaving.
The PEOPLE did speak, Desi. You seem to not understand that the minority may not agree with the majority, but that doesn't mean they don't have to live with the rules of the majority.
May 25, 2009 4:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
You can't fucking read. It doesn't say, "derives from the consent of an agreement of all of the governed", it says succinctly "derives from the consent of the governed". 11 states chose to dissent (martial law was declared in Maryland to keep it from dissenting - nice "consent of the governed" there). The United States was an agreement between individual states, a partial investment of a state's rights in the federal government.
Anyway, if you can manage to twist the Declaration of Independence into weird tortured explanations, not much use continuing.
May 25, 2009 4:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Who can't read, Desi. The governed is the *entire* nation, not some special sample of population.
Are you aware that you are stuck with your elected officials even if you didn't cast a vote for them?
Were I you, I'd take a deep breath.
Besides, you still haven't answered my very specific points on your specific points in your blogs. I'm assuming it's because it's easier to try rhetorical arguments rather than a more logical debate.
May 25, 2009 4:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
States, brilliant one, an agreement between states. Clearly denoted in the Constitution, if I can use that trademarked word.
May 25, 2009 4:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oleeb, is this issue personal for you? I ask because "traitor" is an heavy club to swing in 2009. Yesterday you said the North was "The side of patriots and the side of freedom. The other side is the side of treason, slavery and lies." Ok, sure, you can call the Southerners traitors, and line up the legal evidence.
But all Americans were traitors to Britain. So... kill 'em all?
"Treason" is about how one defines a "nation," and a simple acceptance of borders or laws very rarely has much value. Just for example, Canada has 3 founding nations - English, French and Native. If any of these groups want to form their own nation-state, would "traitor" be the appropriate label? One mile from me is the statue of Louis Riel, who was hung as a traitor for rebelling in 1885 (a real shooting war) on behalf of a "Metis" nation in the West. He is now seen as a national hero, and we celebrate a HOLIDAY in his honour. I skate past him every day in Winter, where he stands next to the Legislature.
More deeply, you place freedom pretty completely on one side. I wasn't aware that slavery - if that's what you mean - was the sole argument for the War. If you're referring to some wider freedom, the U.S. - putting aside a lot of wonderful things it has done - has bought and sold territory and the peoples on them; wiped out whole nation and taken their land; and attacked others with an eye to incorporating them. Ask the natives, Mexicans and Canucks. For instance, Canada was formed in 1867. Please note that date. This country was largely formed out of fear that the North would go beyond the Fenian Raids and aim Manifest Destiny North - not just West and South. I'd say the fear was reasonably well-founded.
Or to make freedom's location a personal issue, Sherman may have been a complete gentlemen in his dealings with the South, but I doubt the Native people of the West found him so. So did the North, and the U.S. and Generals like Sherman really have such a perfect and complete grip on "freedom?"
I think, to state my views outright, that there is precisely zero historical evidence that shows "nations" or "governments" or the "borders of nation-states" or any such creations to have any God-given, scientific, or permanent historical status. Zero. Nor do I find one lick's worth of evidence than any one virtue, ever, has been found to be located only on one side of a border, or contained within one group of human bodies.
So, are you just angry? Is this a personal issue? Or are you trying to say something much more narrowly-defined with these words like treason and freedom?
May 25, 2009 2:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Quinn,
Any confederate was indeed a traitor to the Union, of that there is no question. When you openly rebel against the government in an effort to try to overthrow it, you are a traitor.
As far as Sherman's stance in the West, I don't know if you know or not, but his view was quite simple: regarding the Native American question, you either kill them now or later. He definitely didn't have the issue of wringing his hands to make himself feel good, but trying to get his greedy outcome as well (much like those in the US currently don't see why many of our policies are to guarantee our lifestyle of cheap oil).
Sherman was also a flaming anti-Semite.
Here's what I've learned about history: you judge people within their times. Only extraordinary individuals can leap outside them.
In Sherman's time, the Natives were routinely referred to as savages and without soul. Yes, dumb... of course, one could argue that no one has a soul as that's just a religious construct. But then I'd be leaping outside of today's norms... and I digress.
Sherman was magnificent at problem solving and would live with the consequences of his solution. That's what made him special. Too many people don't have the courage of their convictions and want events in a certain way but also want to salve their conscious. That's the height of hypocrisy.
May 25, 2009 2:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
The South did not try to overthrow the US - it tried to leave. Peacefully. The only fighting that came after 4 months was some shells against a federal fort sitting in the middle of a Southern harbor. With no casualties.
Czechoslovakia broke up with 2 signatures. No fighting, no pain, no hatred. Both members of the EU and big trading partners.
May 25, 2009 2:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
LOL! Desi, learn some history.
Czechoslovakia was a construct of the league of nations following WWI and was an amalgam of the Czechs and Slovenians. The split was a split along those racial/tribal lines.
This has nothing to do with the United States.
As far as "wanting to leave"... you can't. The South claimed they legally could, the Union claimed they couldn't. The Civil War decided that once and for all. And I've never bought the South's argument that you can decide to tear up a contract at will... you can't do that without the other party's consent. And obviously they didn't have it. (But the Czechs and Slovenians did.)
Your argument would be much stronger if you didn't keep pulling up irrelevant examples from history.
May 25, 2009 2:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I know enough fucking history, thank you for your unwarranted condescending attitude. The Czechs and Slovaks had pushed for self-determination and the revival of their language and art for 100 years, and then end of WWI allowed them to lobby for the creation of an independent state with similar cultures, very different from the carving of Kuwait out of Iraq and other colonial ventures. Of course there were other ethnic groups in Czechoslovakia to complicate matters, including Silesians, Germans, Hungarians, Roma and the subtle difference between Moravians and Bohemians/Czechs.
So what the fuck does it matter if a nation breaks up along racial lines or others? It's people's choice. Slovakia would have seceded whether the Czechs agreed or not, it just made it easier when the Czechs were reasonable - i.e. it's not a God-ordained dictum that you have to go to war to split apart. After a troubled history that involved the invasion of the Sudetenland, Slovak cooperation with Nazis, and the various ordeals of Communism, you might say the two regions were not quite the same partners with the same attitudes as when they signed the agreement 70 years earlier on the breakup of the Habsburg Empire - sometimes people change, though there was quite a bit of political posturing that exacerbated small differences unnecessarily.
May 25, 2009 3:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ok. Let me try to understand this. I think most Americans dance pretty rapidly around what appears - to most outsiders - as the screamingly obvious truth. The nation was founded in treason. Most of the founding fathers were, in fact traitors. Now, you should note that I'm NOT bothered by that. I think 1776 was a great thing, see? If it took, treason, so what? But Americans find this one hard, because... of the war with the South.
But one version of the story might go.... In the 1770's, a batch of traitors rebelled against Britain. And won! Nonetheless, victory no more erases a man's treason than a clean getaway makes a thief an honest man. By the 1860's, the traitors fall out amongst themselves. The Northerners howl because the Southerners want to hang onto a practice enshrined... in their very own original Traitors Constitution. So, they fight a brutal war. And get this. The original country they betrayed had long since done away with slavery.
My point to Oleeb was that I find terms like traitor to be utterly useless. When they get slapped on the South, it just makes me think Northerners are... a bit dim. And to see a war of that scale, with slavery half in and half out of it, and the actions being taken on the rest of the continent, and spin it as "Freedom" like William Bleeding Wallace howling against the English? Well, I'm from Scotland, but I know better than to believe that shite. Same for Sherman. As for Sherman, I have no problem judging him within his time, and maybe he did a great job, considering. But he was no angel, ask the Natives.
Des wants to knock some myth-making and unwarranted self-righteousnessness on the head here. I've got no problem with that. After all, the country I'm presently in was Founded in Fear... the main Father of Confederation was a drunk and corrupt... and this Province - as mentioned - was founded by a delusional, convicted traitor.
And it matters not a damn. Which is the punchline.
May 25, 2009 3:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course you have an issue with the word "traitor". You are up there with all the loyalists.
Yes, the revolutionary leaders were leading a treasonous cause against the British. And Benedict Arnold was a traitor the American cause.
And the South were traitors to the Union... they were called "Rebels" for a reason.
Disagreeing with your government isn't a traitorous act. Trying to tear down your government outside of legal means is.
I'm surprised you don't get this concept, Quinn. Your arguments often fall back on the relativism of being "outside the system": sometimes you are Canadian, sometimes American, sometimes Scot, whatever. It always allows you to cast interesting aspersions (the North was "dim") and then simply say "Whoa! Just an outsider's view... I don't have a horse in this race".
A bit disingenuous actually. Kind of like Fred MacMurray in the CAINE MUTINY. And then you ended your comment with exactly that type of line again. Nice.
As far as tearing down myths, you know full well many of my posts do that with a high degree of discomfort from those around here. But if you can't tear down "myths" (many of which aren't) without misrepresenting, setting up strawmen, and out and out neglecting facts, it's not much of a post.
I mean, his Woody Allen misquote isn't even from Woody Allen... it's Groucho Marx.
May 25, 2009 4:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
What's amusing, CT, is that you can't see how you just bashed your own argument to death.
* Both the US Revn & the South were led by rebels (traitors.)
* Both sets of rebels were minorities within their countries.
* Both chose to use violence when they "didn't get their way."
Which pretty much kills your arguments - assuming they have something to do with "preserving the Union" and the South's "minority" status and (my fave!) the sanctity of contracts.
The case against the South needs MORAL legs under it. "Preserving the Union" or "You're a minority" or "There's this Constitution" on their own are weak arguments, unless they've got a moral case under them. I mean, you'd kill hundreds of thousands of people just to be able to say they're still part of your country? Wow.
But you already threw away the moral argument, by saying slavery wasn't the issue at the start of the war. So what's left? Looks like just another straight-up political and economic power struggle.
I will say, you did a damn good job of putting Clearthinker in his place though.
May 25, 2009 5:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
What's amusing, quinn, is that you are always trying to psychoanalyze the poster rather than stay on top of the debate. Therefore, your arguments tend to be merely contradiction of people rather than move the debate forward. (You did it to Oleeb above, for example...)
So, instead of trying to merely contradict me for whatever reasons you have, try to read the following and stay on topic:
1) Yes, the American Revolutionaries were traitors to the British Government (And PS: Benedict Arnold was a traitor to the American Revolution by double crossing his colleagues.)
2) Yes, the South were traitors to the Union
No, that doesn't equate the two.
First, the South could never articulate their reason for the split like in the Declaration of Independence. That's because the American Revolution were looking for a new form of government (rule of law only, no constitutional monarchy) and the Southern states were just upset about a few laws.
As far as your bait-and-switch discussion about who "led" the rebellion in both cases and what that implied: Most Americans supported the Revolution. The ones who wanted the crown, fled to the great white north. Unlike your Jr. High notion, you can support a war effort without being in uniform. If the revolutionaries were truly in the minority, there would have been a "Civil War" in the US in 1776, not a rebellion.
As far as your dismissal of argument like "there's this Constitution" (your words), you really show ignorance here. The whole point of the US Revolution was to have the rule of law be binding. You clearly don't understand the legal underpinnings of the United States by this statement. A "moral" justification for the Union keeping the South in? None needed. It was the South that wanted to break the status quo. The burden is on them. And as you can see, neither you nor Desi know enough about the antebellum era to make cogent remarks on this point.
You are the one that puts some weird form of "moral" framework on things. And then are upset when no one cares to argue the point.
Simply put: you can't break laws you don't agree with and expect there to be no consequences. The South was breaking the law of the Constitution. There were consequences.
May 25, 2009 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Clearthinking in action:
1. The Southern states were "just upset about a few laws." Against this, I can lay down many tens of thousands of bodies.
2. I said, "Both sets of rebels were minorities within their countries." Clearthinker says, the American Revolutionaries were in the majority. He is wrong. Here's a chart to help him. It compares the original, "bigger" states with each other... and then the breakaway or "smaller" regions with each other. That way, apples can go with apples, and pears with pears.
The Original States: Britain 1776 = U.S. 1860
The Breakaway Lads: U.S. 1776 = South 1860
So just as the South was a minority within the entire US in 1860, so too were the US revolutionaries a minority within all of Britain in 1776.
3. CT on contracts, constitutions and the law is incoherent. He doesn't believe Constitutions and the Law should be broken. Therefore, to CT, the American Revolution never should have taken place, as he admits it was treason. And yet, he doesn't oppose it. This is incoherent.
4. Personally, I support the moral case made by the US in 1776. i.e. I support the Revolution. I'm sure there was lots of hype and property and PR and greed in play, but on the whole, what was produced was exceptional. Good for the US, good for the world.
I also support the moral case made by the North in 1860 - insofaras it dealt with slavery. What bothers me is that slavery doesn't seem to have been the core argument at the start, but only to have risen in strength over time. Which means there were other purposes afoot in its early days. I am not convinced by any of these other arguments.
Worse, some people (even today) seem to think "preserving the Union" is an argument that can stand on its own, apart from the moral content. As though it is justifiable to kill hundreds of thousands of people to preserve a particular set of borders. In short, we English Canadians would somehow be justified - in the high and hot moral sense defenders of the Union present in slaughtering Quebecois if they chose to leave? This is the argument of moral midgets. The case needs a moral bottom, whether anti-slavery or the will of the oppressed majority (white and black) or it is nothing.
Interesting that CT sees my approach as putting "some weird form of 'moral' framework on things." Clearthinker? Morality? YIKES!
May 25, 2009 3:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can always break any contract, if you are willing to risk the consequences.
Your biggest issue is that you keep stubbornly trying to conflate the US Revolution with the Civil War which shows you understand neither.
By the way, the Confederacy wasn't much of a practical governing solution anyway. Jeff Davis constantly had grumbling states wondering why they were sending their militias to fight other states' battles. The South had no more practical high-ground then "If I don't like this law, I'm leaving". The concept of minority acceptance of majority rule (not majority tyranny, but majority rule) seems lost on more than a few people here.
There was a reason why the Articles of Confederation in 1781 needed to be redone with the present Constitution.
You just stay up there in Canada with the Brit loyalists, my little quinn. Assuming that's your chosen group of the day. Or are you Scottish today? I can't remember, it changes so quickly.
May 25, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Boor.
May 25, 2009 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
“I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying; and for this reason: I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.” Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Mrs. Orville H. Browning, April 1, 1838.
May 25, 2009 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Treason is what they committed when they rose up against the US. It is what it is.
Grant covered nicely the question of risk when one rises up against one's own country and the bottom line is that you risk all and if you fail you lose all.
And yes, freedom was only on one side of that war. There is no gray area at all on this question as far as I am concerned.
As for Sherman in the Indian Wars I'm quite sure like every other US Commander he did dreadful things, but that is not what this thread is about. Sherman's "March to the sea" is portrayed by revisionists as some sort of horrible thing done to innocents and that is simply and quite factually in error though it is a nice, distracting, fairy tale for those who would rather discuss the victimhood of "innocent" traitors than their defense of human slavery.
I know this is an implacable position but it is my position and heartfelt. I long ago grew tired of those who besmirch the memory of those who died in such great numbers to defend the nation against, yes, treason for the shocking purpose of protecting slavery.
As for other issues and other times there is debate to be had. But obviously, I don't really think there's anything to debate regarding the Civil War and I don't think those who fought or those who lost so many loved ones as a result of the rebellion thought so either. Typically those who now defend the armed insurrection bark and howl their calumny without much response. Instead, people try to be magnanimous but few defend the honor of those who stood by their country and preserved it for future generations. I think it is time people stood up to defend the honor and sacrifice of the people who held the nation together. That's just where I am on it and where I will always be.
May 25, 2009 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know q I have thought about this a lot. I mean England banned slavery before we did.
And Canada appears to be doing all right. I mean you have health care if you can get to the proper location in your '57 Chevy.
I know a lot of you like to put knives on your feet and go after others with long sticks pretending to hit a flat ball on the ice--by the way, who thought of a flat ball in the first place.
And you people really do not speak any differently than Northern Minnesotans, hey.
And you are much better with sled dogs. I am not aware whether or not your 'original' population gets to open bingo parlors and craps games, but...
I think Canucks are good people and probably smart not to have become the 51st state. I mean 50 is an even number. Easier to digest. 100 senators and all that.
THE END
May 25, 2009 12:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
We could put them all under Alaska and Sarah Palin. I don't know how she'd fix the French problem, but probably a nod and a wink would do it.
May 25, 2009 2:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
But Todd Palin wants Alaska to secede from the United States, remember? I don't actually see that as treachery; I see it as hypocrisy, since his wife wanted to be President of the country he wants to secede from (OK, she was 'settling' for VP temporarily); and stupidity, since Alaska would then presumably have his wife as President - and she is NOT smart enough to that job at all.
May 25, 2009 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sherman gave the south what was coming, and his campaign bore no relation to the fire bombing of Dresden from the air in WW2. He ended the war and saved lives on both sides.
Sherman let people leave before any structure was burned and only destroyed infrastructure necessary for military use or support, stayed in the big plantation houses of prominent southern rebel leaders who had left their women folk and children behind, knowing Sherman would not molest them as he moved through the state.
As he approached the outskirts of the capitol of Georgia at that time, Milledgeville, rich white slave holding southern landowners were arguing about the drawing of county lines to reduce their taxes, (see Southern Storm, - remind anyone of a political party today?.
When the Georgia politicians heard Sherman was approaching they forgot about their taxes long enough to skedaddle and avoid the fighting, which they left mostly to poor whites.
May 24, 2009 8:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sherman gave "The South" what was coming? Read what I just wrote above you. There were a lot of victims in that war, and I don't believe for a minute that all those Rebel soldiers were fighting for slavery; they were fighting for their families. Remember, there was no internet; no real way of communication. Read what Des wrote and learn. Anything that is simple is probably too simple.
May 24, 2009 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, NO soldier fights for the general principles, they end up fighting bravely for their buddies next to them.
I suggest you review the correspondence between Sherman and Hood. Hood can't make his case at all. That's pretty damning. And Sherman knew the South quite well having led LSU!
Read Sherman's autobiography. Here is a taste of something he said upon learning that SC seceded:
But the South went and did it anyway because they didn't think the North had resolve.
They found out.
Now, it's true that post-WWII studies showed that aerial bombardment and merciless pounding of civilian populations do not tend to weaken their resolve, but rather strengthens it -- but Sherman couldn't have known that. But he did incapacitate the South's ability to wage war ever again and that was a primary mission of his March to the Sea. THAT is done in war all the time.
Moral to the story: the South could have surrendered at any time, they chose not to. If you want to "fight to the finish" then you better be prepared to ante up. The sad truth is that most people can't imagine the real horrors until it is brought to their doorstep.
May 24, 2009 11:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well stated and clear thinking.
The rebel southern politicians, as I said above, were so afraid of Sherman they left their wives and children (and slaves) behind to face him while they, knowing their own guilt, vamoosed to safety and hoarded what forces they had to protect themselves.
Sherman treated the women and children with honor, and freed their slaves, who followed his army in the thousands.
May 25, 2009 12:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm no Southern apologist, but to say, "Sherman treated the women and children with honor," would be news to the 450 plus women and children that were rounded up by Sherman and shipped by rail from Atlanta to Kentucky and beyond. These women had been charged with the crime of treason for making uniforms in a local cotton mill and were made to walk ten miles with their children to the rail depot where they were loaded into cattle cars for the trip north. The vast majority of those that survived the train trip were never reunited with their families after the war. At the time both Northern and Southern papers denounced this act by Sherman, but as he famously said, "war is hell."
May 26, 2009 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brilliant. The Chechnyans questioned the resolve of the Russians, they didn't know anything about war, they could have surrendered at any time but they chose to fight. They had it coming to them, they got what they deserved.
So what did the South have to do to get out of the Union? Oh, they can't leave. Well fuck that. Countries and territories reorganize all the time. Some of them even peaceably, which the South would have if the North had not been pricks. Lincoln was about preserving the Union, not stopping slavery, and it didn't matter how much useless blood it took.
How long do you think it would have taken the Confederacy to give up slavery if it had been free? One generation? Two? Europe wouldn't have continued trading with a South based on slave labor - as it was, Europe wouldn't support the Confederacy's independence exactly because of that. Clinton isolated Milosevic and he was gone in 10 years. Bush had to capture Hussein and we're still there. The difference between smart and stupid strategies, and 150 years later we're still defending the bloody stupid one.
Seeing as we took California by force, stole it from Mexico, is California obligated to stay in the Union forever, just because some ancestor signed a paper?
Instead we get Jethro Bodine logic here, "They were traitors, they got what was comin' to 'em".
May 25, 2009 2:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, that was a crazy post, Desi.
You are making the GOP argument: as long as you are in the majority, everything is cool. But if you fall into the minority, you want to leave.
That's not how Republics work, my friend. There is something called majority rule and you can't take your ball home just because YOU decide to quit.
What would it have taken for them to get out of the Union? Winning the Civil War. That's why they fought so hard and why you had the Union fight back.
You can't tear of contracts today just because you decided you don't like that you willingly participated in them yesterday.
And stop with all the irrelevant arguments by trying to create faux analogies. The South *wanted* to be part of the Union in 1776 and signed up for it. They only wanted out when they got cranky about a waning political influence. And part of the reason they had waning political influence is that they weren't industrialized.
A much better question is this: Had Eli Whitney not invented the cotton gin, would the South had clung to it's cotton culture long after it retarded the overall growth of its society?
May 25, 2009 2:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
You never answered the question about the North not upholding the Constitution, which guaranteed slavery.
The GOP wants to hold back a judicial candidate because she upheld the Supreme Court-vetted law with regards to comments on abortion. Quite the opposite to what I'm saying.
But I'll go with you - I think states should be able to withdraw any time they feel the benefits are no longer there. They can measure the pros and cons and decide for themselves. The flag went from 13 stars to 50 stars - it can easily go back to 48 or whatever. If Hawaii secedes, who cares? Montana or Wyoming or Idaho, would you notice? San Marino is a country completely landlocked inside Italy - doesn't seem to bother anyone. I didn't realize "union-or-bust" was such a divine-rights issue these days.
May 25, 2009 3:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
You keep bringing up the issue of the Constitution guaranteeing slavery. It doesn't. It sidesteps the issue delicately and is written to acknowledge current existence of slavery but doesn't explicitly guarantee anything. Indeed, it was written in hopes that the issue would be resolved in 20 years... which it wasn't. Hardly a "guarantee".
If you want to see something definitive in the Constitution on slavery, I direct you to the very clear language of the 13th Amendment. Nothing this strong about slavery is in the Constitution prior to this amendment.
As far as secession, Desi, you are always free to leave the US if you can't stand it here.
May 25, 2009 3:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sad.
May 25, 2009 4:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Uh huh. Sure, quinn.
May 25, 2009 4:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Love it or leave it, right Bubba? Inside every intellectual lies a redneck straining to get out. But even there, you're funny - it's okay for me to leave individually, but not with family and friends - that would be treason. Perhaps you're concerned with property rights and borders, not rights of people. Maybe you're a deep-rooted real estate Republican.
May 25, 2009 4:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Love it or leave it is what your whole argument is!
Basically you have repeated said that the South didn't like the way things were going, so they wanted to leave and had the right to.
Are you sure you read your own posts before you make them?
May 25, 2009 4:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Are you going to learn to read the Declaration of Independence, no clear thinker left behind?
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
That's not "love it or leave it", that's "try to make it work but change it or leave if it becomes intolerable and despotic". The rights of man. Unfortunately not extended to blacks at that point in time, nor Chinese, nor Mexicans or Native Americans, nor fully to women, but certainly the ideal seems simple enough.
May 25, 2009 4:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Again: what exactly were the "rights of man" denied the wealthy, landed gentry in the South that voted to secede?
May 25, 2009 4:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Read their secession papers. But be forewarned, they're not obliged to fit their grievances in with the opinions of a blogger 150 years later.
May 25, 2009 4:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nice non-answer. I didn't think you had this thought through all the way.
May 25, 2009 5:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
The South shall come again!...Apu - The Simpsons
My bigotry of dumbasses has no geographic preference.
Nice piece though. Enjoyed the extended perspective on "historically canned and ready to eat" issues.
(Although not from the "South" my professional and personal education was received in the South)
May 24, 2009 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
A global, equal time contempt for dumbasses is welcome, not that I'll be so happy when you train your sights on me.
It's the small minded bigotry preferring one class of dumbass arbitrarily over another class that irks me to no end.
May 25, 2009 4:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Desi,
I am all for ripping people out of their sleepwalking habits, but unfortunately your history is a bit lacking here.
Prelude: Northern Brits repressing South's Scots and Irish? Hogwash! If that were the case, why was the South the dominant force in US politics for much of the early nations history? Why is that NEW ENGLAND was the first region thinking about secession?
Point 1: Comparing Iraq to the South or Germany is ludicrous because Iraq didn't engage in physical hostile acts of aggression just prior to our invasion. As far as Sherman's attitude of total warfare and his march to the sea, I suggest you look at his correspondence to Gen Hood just prior to attacking Atlanta. Sherman basically reminds Hood that the South started the war (which they did) and if you aren't ready for it, don't get it started. Or, to quote: War is cruelty, you cannot refine it. (You can find all of this correspondence in Sherman's autobiography.)
Point 2: This point is simply contradicted by yourself in your point 5. The war wasn't about slavery until Lincoln transformed it as such to rally the North and make the war about something specific - sometime around the time of the Emancipation Proclamation. Slavery kept coming up as a sticking point, but the real cause of the war was how the states should be expected to behave with respect to the federal government. Read THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM which spells much of this out quite nicely.
More proof? Use your own arguments in Point 5: Lincoln's Emancipation did *not* free any slaves in any of the states that did not rebel... and also, Lincoln was quite clear about preserving the Union was his goal early on, not about slavery.
Indeed, in today's world, I'm sure the abolitionists would be crying for Lincoln's head, just as the left is crying for Obama's.
Point 3: Your view of Sumnter is interesting, but more than a little biased. So be it. But to compare the south -- which was bound to the north because of political, and not racial or tribal reasons -- to your other examples is most absurd. Not all Civil Wars are the same. There's a reason they talk about "brother against brother" in the US Civil War. And there is also a reason why the it's difficult to explain what the war is about, unless you lump it all into "slavery". The US Civil War was absolutely a war about differing political philosophies, not like the examples you cite where "self-governance" is more the reason.
Point 4: You make a good point to remind people that the North is also racist, and there is plenty of evidence to back it up. But to then equate the north to the south as a result is a bit like the GOP pointing to Pelosi so as to wash away their greater transgressions. If you really want to see what the institutional north vs the institutional south was like, I suggest you follow the Civil Rights debate in the Senate from about 1955 to 1965 and see who was entrenched and who was providing a guiding spirit. That's the reason why it had to be someone like LBJ to break the Senate's back -- Humphrey was never credible because of where he was coming from.
Point 5: Lincoln's actions were all of leniency, despite the suspension of Habeas Corpus. There was also a war going on at the time. Last I checked Bush trampled on civil rights without an internal war going on. And you will find that Lincoln made vast pardons of anyone and everyone if they were willing to deal with the idea of a strong Union. This applied to Union deserters and Confederate soldiers. Many forget that Lincoln's second VP was the only Southerner who didn't abandon the Senate. This is a major reasons behind all the political posturing after Lincoln's assassination.
Sadly, while your goal was noble, I believe you have been sucked into a number of myths as well.
May 24, 2009 11:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I forgot to mention: a particularly penetrating analysis of the Southern region and how it "rose" in the 20th Century to dominate the American Landscape, can be found in Kevin Phillip's book AMERICAN THEOCRACY.
May 24, 2009 11:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
If that book got you to your condescending attitude, don't need it.
You think states don't have a right to secede. I think agreements are meant to be kept as long as they're mutually beneficial, and when there ceases to be enough agreement to make it worthwhile, the agreement should be terminated as agreeably as possible.
That the South had significant power is undeniable. That there were anti-rural attitudes from the more industrial North and other cultural and regional biases is also undeniable. Of course the South made fun of the crude North as well.
The South had been complaining about unfair upholding of the Constitution for years, and the election of Lincoln was seen as a complete break from Southern interests. Obviously the moral tides were against the South even at that time, but the question of secession becomes one of "are people required to commit cultural suicide just because their ancestors signed on to an agreement". If the structure of the US government becomes so warped as to be intolerable, whether it's the anti-South sentiment of the 1860's, the anti-Civil Rights pro-corruption packing of the Supreme Court in the late 1800's, or the corrupt conservative packing of the court and various illegal measures in the 2001-2009 period, secession should be one serious measure relieve the injustice. If Alberto Gonzales insists on tapping all my communications and Dick Cheney insists on torturing in the name of my country, and I can't seem to get Constitutional recourse to this, then secession on the state level seems entirely appropriate, whether Georgia or Massachusetts. Otherwise States' Rights is a bunch of blather, and we're not a federation nor a Republic, just a nation under unwanted tyranny.
May 25, 2009 4:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
I get it. Your method of discussion is to stick your fingers in your ears and go "la la la, I can't hear you".
As numerous people pointed out here, you don't have a grasp of historical facts and trends on this topic.
That's why your arguments aren't compelling in the least. If you had visited the north, you'd know that farming was huge there as well... the only thing missing was the notion of chattel property to get it done.
Here's how stupid the South was: they decided that they would try to be obstructionist in the 1860 election and somehow the nation would bow in their direction. Instead they were passed by and, pouting in disbelief they decided to take their ball and go home. In other words, they had a cold slap of reality on just how they couldn't run things unilaterally and they freaked.
Doesn't that sound like the GOP since the 2008 election?
By the way, congratulations, Desi. You are now spouting the same arguments about secession that you can find on Fox News or from Texans.
May 25, 2009 4:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Right, I'm doing "la la la" if I don't read every book that CleverThinker thinks brilliant. Who depusses your head in the evening, all that brilliance building up second by second?
May 25, 2009 4:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I guess I'm not surprised by your answer. Even in your profile, when is says "Favorite Books", you responded with "Ack, Books? Who reads books?"
Up until now, I simply thought this was a joke.
May 25, 2009 5:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dude. Have you ever read anything beyond those same 5 books you keep recommending?
May 25, 2009 5:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dude, ever have a discussion without making the whole thing personal? If you bothered to read what I wrote, I pointed people to Sherman's autobiography multiple times above. Second, if a particular book makes a point, I'll use that book. Third, clearly since you've not read anything I've mentioned in the past, I'm trying to keep the list small rather than overwhelm you.
May 25, 2009 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you imagine the South as Chechnya and the North as Russia, or more germane, the North continuing the British' traditional repression of the South's rural Scottish and Irish, perhaps you can expand your worldview to acknowledge that those who think they're on a mission from God are often the most blinded and misguided and cruelest, and engender the least respect.
The "traditional" repression must of have come to a halt because Georgia and South Carolina (full of Scots and Irish) were great trading partners with Great Britain. I am sure I read that some of big families of South Carolina were well ensconced in this way of life. In fact, I believe some in South Carolina and Georgia were on the side of the Redcoats during the Revolutionary War.
I believe one of the arguments used by apologist of slavery in the United States is that the British made the colonies do it.
Okay, if they made you do it, you didn't like it and you had a revolution, why did you put slavery in the Constitution?
May 24, 2009 11:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just in case this wasn't obvious, the South of course did help build the institution of slavery, especially being the prime instigators post-1793. That the North helped originate it, got their use from it and abandoned it in dribs and drabs up to 1848, along with its later atrocities out West and elsewhere just makes it rather complicit in racial guilt. If I were Native American or Mexican or African-American, I might take offense at that American flag that signifies so much blood and carnage and land theft in the name of liberty and justice. But those Southerners must be real rednecks in taking some regional pride in that flag of theirs.
May 25, 2009 5:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just in case this wasn't obvious, the South of course did help build the institution of slavery, especially being the prime instigators post-1793. That the North helped originate it, got their use from it and abandoned it in dribs and drabs up to 1848, along with its later atrocities out West and elsewhere just makes it rather complicit in racial guilt. If I were Native American or Mexican or African-American, I might take offense at that American flag that signifies so much blood and carnage and land theft in the name of liberty and justice. But those Southerners must be real rednecks in taking some regional pride in that flag of theirs.
I understand this perfectly.There was a bargain struck by the framers of the Constitution to strategically place the capital south of the Mason-Dixon line so that slave owners could keep their "property" and to count that "property" as three-fifths of one person. I understand that was to give the South the advantage in the House because this branch of government was considered more powerful then it's co-equal Senate during that era. The Southern States would have never signed the Constitution without it.
May 26, 2009 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
True.
May 26, 2009 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are too too resentful sometimes Desi, if I may say so.
There are some things that America has done right.
Dresden could be discussed for hours. Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It was not an easy war.
Judge not lest ye be judged.
I can be against the corporate oligarchy that runs this country, and still be proud to be an American at times.
Too, too resentful.
May 25, 2009 12:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you're missing it - I'm not judging, I'm saying the whole playing field was much much murkier than "dem Southerners were traitors, got their comeuppance". I point out obvious analogies where modern anti-Southern attitudes map directly to some of the world's worst tyrants. This in no way excuses slavery - an institution the North promoted until it no longer suited them. The civilized world had moved on from slavery, and even Connecticut had banned slavery by 1848, 12 years before secession, though that didn't mean slavery in Africa had died, needed to handle the Connecticut ivory trade for the next 50 years:
No judging here, just spreading out the blame, plenty to go around.
May 25, 2009 2:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Okay I get it. I just saw a list of sins with no incidents of grace mentioned.
I came upon 4 volumes of the Virginia Legislature, 18th & 19th centuries. Amazing stuff.
Besides Jefferson who introduced 21 or so bills for the abolition of slavery, there were real speeches made against war with the north. I found the same thing in other southern states. And I mean some votes were 60-40; not 90-10, ya know?
There was guilt to go around. But Oleeb is touching on another subject...
The fight was always to EXTEND slavery, because the south saw their numbers dwindling in Congress and in the electoral college. The fight was never,leave us alone, we will leave you alone.
I have read extensively on this subject as I am sure you have...
I will not bore you further here. Eventually the nation had to come to terms with the ideals stated in the Declaration. Something had to give. And both sides together lost 600,000 lives...
May 25, 2009 2:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, DD, for saying in a gentle way what I have been thinking in not so gentle terms.
May 25, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
from Poet's corner
Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again,
and ever again, this soil'd world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
Walt Whitman (1865)
May 25, 2009 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
All this discussion of the Civil War is good and interesting, but ultimately very irrelevant. All those men are long dead and only important to politics insomuch as those events have left their mark that resounds today.
Here's my take. I grew up in what I would consider the South. What Sarah Palin calls "real Virginia", in a town that holds the final remains of both Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. I grew up embarrassed as hell about my hick surroundings, was proud to get out, and ever since have been a staunch defender of my background. The fact of the matter is that there is no group of people in the United States that you can openly mock and deride as a whole the way that there is open season on southerners. I grew up buying into that. Yeah, there was racism in my home town, and religious zealotry, and general idiocy. When I went to college and found the same idiocy among a bunch of New Yorkers with even more casual racism, I began to think again about what the derision that the South received really meant.
In the end, there are some things I love about the South (as well as being from rural America, a divide that gets lumped in with North vs. South, but isn't quite the same) as well as parts I hate about it. At the end of the day though, I understand it, and I've of course been aware of and attempted for a long time to get to know other parts of the country and what it means from there. I like some parts more than others, but that's okay. What gets to me, and I'm not accusing anyone here of participating, is dismissal of the South without any attempt to understand it. Patiently explaining that most of us actually don't live in trailer parks, and knowing that many people's assumptions are colored by similar absurdities gets pretty old.
Now I'm still about as liberal as they come, and the BS pulled by the Republican party in the South infuriates me more than it rationally should. All I ask is that in condemning this nonsense you look into what creates the sort of resentments so well exploited by the Republicans. I just don't get how someone can be so open-minded to sympathize with the long term socioeconomics and exploitation that led to someone becoming a suicide bomber, but not see how Pittsburgh Plus and the better part of a century of total villification regarding race might be relevant to the current political climate.
May 25, 2009 2:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Very well said, parallels my experience pretty closely.
May 25, 2009 3:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Desidero, you're a lousy historian and a thoroughly dishonest writer. You compare what Sherman did to the fire-bombing of a city, an attack that killed between 35,000 and 50,000 people in one night? You brush off the horrors of lynch rule by casually saying, in effect, it wasn't as bad as anything Stalin did? Right away I knew I was in the presence of a first-class fraud.
Some facts that you may not like:
1. It was delegates to the Continental Congress from Georgia and South Carolina who most vehemently demanded that Jefferson's condemnation of the slave trade be stricken from the Declaration of Independence (although to be fair northern shipping interests were dubious of it as well--pinheaded racism and greed are indeed widespread). Nonetheless, the most virulent strains of the sickness of racial hatred were found among the slave-holding class of the South.
2. It was South Carolina that pressed the hardest for the maintenance of human slavery and the slave trade during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It was the Southern delegates that threatened to sink the whole project if slavery was not protected. They "graciously" consented to end the slave trade by 1808, even though slaves were still illegally imported. They "graciously" allowed their representation in Congress to be swollen by the retention of the "three-fifths" clause found in the Articles. They defeated all attempts to weaken their criminal economic system, staining our nation's founding with hypocrisy and shame.
3. Throughout the run-up to the Civil War, it was ALWAYS the South that had to be placated. From the Compromise of 1820 to the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the rest of the country always had to be careful not to offend the sensibilities of white Southern conservatives and their "Peculiar Institution", an institution fully as cruel and barbaric as Russian serfdom. Northerners were even legally obligated to return fugitive slaves. Oh, and by the way, it was South Carolina (Again!) that was front and center in the Nullification Crisis of 1832, which Andrew Jackson firmly crushed.
4. It was the slave state majority on the Supreme Court in 1857 that said that no African-American could ever be a citizen (Dred Scott v. Sanford) and that slavery could not legally be prohibited in ANY territory of the U.S.--the most morally evil and corrupt Supreme Court decision in American history.
5. Southern preachers were adept at finding rationalizations for slavery. Southern "scientists" came up with "scientific proof" of the inferiority of blacks. Southern "philosophers" explained why blacks were "happier and better off" under slavery!
6. In 1860, Lincoln was NOT proposing abolition. He just wanted to see slavery prohibited in the territories. That was too much for the slave owning class in the South, which, after effectively keeping Lincoln off the ballot in the South (such wonderful believers in democracy!) began the secession movement in--where else?--South Carolina.
7. The seceding states EXPLICITLY declared that slavery was the reason for their secession. Mississippi's declaration was typical:
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
8. It was Lincoln that offered compromise. It was secessionists who answered with gunfire.
9. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a southern hero, was a vicious war criminal who murdered black Union troops in cold blood. He should have been hanged after the war. Instead, he lived to start the KKK.
10. You're right, Desidero--racial hatred in America knows no boundaries. But its worst forms were ALWAYS in the Jim Crow Apartheid System South. And Lynch Law was NEVER just about numbers--it was pure, naked intimidation in its worst forms, and you damned well know it. The South fought savagely to prevent any extension of human rights to its black population. It switched from conservative Democratic to Republican in the 1960s almost exclusively over the race issue.
11. The southern churches which have been the source of the raving fundamentalist lunacy that blights America were founded on the premise that the wrong side won the Civil War.
12. Worst school systems? Lowest levels of human development? Worst prison systems? Worst economic conditions, historically? Most widespread racism, homophobia, anti-labor union lunacy, and public health? Most backward view of women's rights? Take one guess Desidero. And these conditions were not imposed by the North. They were imposed by white Southern economic interests on their own people. These same interests used racial hatred to maintain their power, distracting poor white southerners from the real cause of their distress.
13. The South as Chechnya? Chechnya had no say in the development of Russia, and had been barbarically treated under Stalin. In America, the South ran Congress through the Seniority System and milked the North for money relentlessly using that System. My God, your argument there is particularly idiotic.
14. There were a handful of executions in the South after the war. The South, despite its lying propaganda about the "horrors" of the Reconstruction (i.e., giving rights to blacks) was treated more decently than any other losers in all of modern history.
15. The leaders of the Confederacy were traitors who should have been shot. The Confederate flag is the banner of racism and treason. Got it? The South was on the wrong side of the Civil War. Got it?
Yes, the South has had no corner on evil and corruption. And too often the North has allowed white conservative Southerners to push the rest of America around. But by God, I'm sick of this neo-Confederate bullshit, and I'm calling you on it once and for all. Southern progressives are the hope of the region. The white conservative South has been the millstone on this country for over 200 years. It's time for the "Southern Way of Life" to die now and for all time. And it's time for white conservative Southerners to sit down and shut the hell up. They've done enough damage already.
May 25, 2009 4:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well said. Most of Desi's arguments would be a lot more compelling if it were the blacks in the South that rose up against the US Government. Instead, it was the wealthy, educated, landed class.
And as final proof, what drove the Democratic south into the arms of the GOP? When the Democrats decided to make Civil Rights a central part of their party.
What more proof does one need than that about the region?
May 25, 2009 4:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Rights are not just for those we agree with.
May 25, 2009 4:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
What "rights" of Southerners were being taken away, exactly?
We live under the rule of law. And just because someone whines about losing political influence nationally doesn't give them the "right" to leave.
May 25, 2009 4:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yosef, you'll never find a "Southern progressive" you like as long as you carry the mill of hatred and intolerance and misunderstanding of Southerners around your neck. Connecticut had slavery up to 1848. No acknowledgment on your part. We all know Southerners pushed slave interests, especially after 1793. But the foul acts of others remain obscured to you. The good ol' North especially went on Indian-killing expeditions out West after the war - have to use their weapons somewhere. But it's only the South that's racist, genocidal, etc. You have a very tight, distorted looking glass. Show me the seats of higher learning in Compton. How could Obama get his rise to power dealing with poor black slums in Chicago if the beneficient North is so enlightened, so advanced, so progressive. There's enough stink to go around for everyone, but the stink of the self-righteous somehow always calls more attention to itself.
May 25, 2009 4:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
The irony, Desi, is that no one here is calling you a "genocidal freak" like you assert in your opening paragraph. Most are simply arguing your apologist and inaccurate view of history.
May 25, 2009 4:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Many Americans look at Southerners as genocidal, racist freaks, such as the rant by Yosef52 just 5 comments above.
Okay, I've run out of responses for Clear Thinker, can another debater please stand up?
May 25, 2009 5:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yosef, well said. As a Southern born and bred who has only managed to escape to more than one border state, I think your summation was well done.
I went to a quite large family reunion a few years ago where the "ancestor" tent contained a huge display of Confederate ancestors, some with very meticulously researched stories, with a tiny table of Union ancestors. One of my group paused at the Confederacy table, "Sad that our folks didn't go with the winners."
Even sadder was that we later found out from the geneology folks that the actual numbers showed the majority of our ancestors served in the Union.
May 25, 2009 12:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow! That was a pure thunderbolt!
You wrote:
"14. There were a handful of executions in the South after the war. The South, despite its lying propaganda about the "horrors" of the Reconstruction (i.e., giving rights to blacks) was treated more decently than any other losers in all of modern history."
And what did the rest of the country get in return for the extraordinarily decent treatment the south got after the war? More of the same in the form of Jim Crow, the KKK, members of Congress from the south dominating all legislative action for decades but mostly thwarting progress. That habit of blocking all progress in Congress is on full display right now as the GOP has morphed into the party of the south, the inheritors if you will of the southern legacy of reaction and racsim reaching out from centuries past and refusing to die like Lord Voldemort. Until we finally crush that political lock on power in the south our country will continue to be held back.
May 26, 2009 2:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
So the South was treated better than Germany and Japan after WWII, eh? Sure.
May 26, 2009 9:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
As a matter of fact, yes it was.
May 26, 2009 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Desidero, I acknowledged that the South had no monopoly on evil in our history. And believe me, I am fully cognizant of the sins of our nation against the Native Americans and others. Moreover, I never said that all Southerners were "genocidal, racist freaks" (your words). But you are using a discredited debating technique. If I don't acknowledge every bad thing from the past, somehow this exonerates the sins of the South.
It is the Southern white conservatives that cling to the phony Confederate "heritage" argument that aggravate the hell out of me. Kevin Phillips hit it right on the head when he pointed out that there are still businesses in the South that refuse to call themselves "American Such and Such" and insist on retaining the appellation "Southern Such and Such", because their owners still cling to the old Mythology of the South. Alabama until just a few years ago flew the Banner of Treason, otherwise known as the Confederate flag, over the state capitol building, higher than the American flag. In South Carolina I saw a picture in a restaurant of the heroic Marines on Iwo Jima raising the flag on Mt. Suribachi. But this sacred moment had been dishonored by a clever photoshopping to make it look like the Marines were raising a Confederate flag. (If the owner of the place that was displaying that had been present, he would have had his ass decked.) In Texas I saw bumper stickers proudly sporting the Confederate rag and proclaiming it their "heritage". (Heritage? The rebel states were in the Confederacy 4 years. Texas joined the Union 164 years ago. Four out of 164 constitutes a heritage? Virginia was first settled in 1607. Is the Confederacy, of which it was a part for 1% of the time since 1607, its "heritage"? )
Apologists for the "Lost Cause" are STILL calling the Civil War "the War of Northern Aggression" and spreading mythology about the awful Reconstruction. That garbage has got to stop once and for all. When South Carolina tears down its disgraceful war memorial to the Confederacy and begins to come to terms with its past, when that damned stinking Confederate rag is finally used for toilet paper only, and when white conservative Southerners stop fighting the damned Civil War, then I'll believe things have changed.
And by the way, Connecticut didn't feel the need to start a civil war over slavery's elimination there.
God Bless Abraham Lincoln, the Greatest American in Our Nation's History!
May 25, 2009 5:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nothing will exonerate the South's guilt about slavery, which is greater than the North's due to scale and obstinance, even though the North is still complicit from the beginnings onward.
I did note that the South tried to leave peacefully and Lincoln wouldn't have it.
On the other hand, marginalizing regional culture is one of the world's greatest past times - Kurds not allowed to use the letter 'w', Afrikaans forced as the ruling language in South Africa, traditional dress disallowed, etc. While Southerners overdo it in ignoring racist linkage in the Confederate flag, Northerners overdo it in denying a non-racist pride in what was and still is a beautiful if flawed culture.
May 25, 2009 6:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Lincoln wouldn't have it? Are you kidding?
Balderdash! Calumny! Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing!
May 26, 2009 2:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
BTW, this is from one of Yale University's sites:
As Connecticut’s slaves were subject only to limited servitude and hereditary slavery was abolished, the concerns of Connecticut’s Blacks centered on improving their social position and working to free slaves in the south. These two issues are not really a part of this [teaching] unit, but I do want to describe briefly the general conditions which Connecticut’s Blacks faced in the early nineteenth century.
Social Conditions: By 1800 83% of Connecticut’s 6,281 Blacks were free, and by the time general emancipation was enacted in 1848 there were only six slaves left in the state. The revolutionary ideas of the last century had released them from bondage, but Connecticut’s Blacks were little better off free than they had been as slaves. They could testify in court and own property, but their place was still at the bottom of society. They could not vote; they were not welcome as social equals in the educational and social institutions of the state.
May 25, 2009 6:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
"I have had this ludicrously stretched caricature of an argument with imaginary people in various fantastic places. I have added some over-the-top generalisations and revved up the motor a bit. Lessee what happens."
May 25, 2009 6:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Born and raised a blue blood yank (NY) I've had the good fortune to live in NC, FL, MS, AZ, WA, CT, MA and MI.
Unfortunately most Americans don't ever have a similar opportunity and end up with false ideas about other eares of the country. For my part I can say we are more alike than not and where we differ, those differences are mostly superficial. Sure you can find bias and various forms of discrimination throughout the country but extremism in that regard is uncommon.
It's a shame more people don't ever have a chance to know this country better. Were that the case, we would most likely be very different in many ways. One thing for sure is we would be less prone to the manipulations of unscrupulous politicians who serve mostly their own agenda.
May 25, 2009 8:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is a list of excuses for a system so rancid and evil that it corrupted the southern elite to the point where they attempted to destroy, through treason, the United States. It sickens me to see people make excuses for rank treason and that's all it ever was. This list of excuses comes not from the time, but afterward---long afterward, when the apologists attempted to concoct new and better reasons for the inexcusable attempt to destroy the union in order to preserve slavery which was the sole cause of the rebellion. There was no other motivating cause. None. And no post-war fiction can make it so.
The invention of these pitiful excuses, particularly so long after the fact, is proof of the disgusting cowardice of the authors of the rebellion and their refusal to admit what they had done. There is a similar faction of revisionists in Japan that, from time to time, raises it's ugly head to attempt the same sort of calumny regarding the agression of the Japanese Empire. These people find that America and others drove the poor and defenseless Japanese to act. Bah! Anyone with any sense recognizes this stuff as nothing but a perversion of the truth. Such are the lies constructed to hide the motivation of the slave powers in their attempt to hold onto their ill gotten gains through an armed rebellion not even freely supported by a majority of the region's white people.
The slave power did not represent the south at all and portraying those who detest treason as hating the south is to choose to obfuscate the issue even further. It is simply dishonest and utterly inaccurate to portray disdain for armed rebellion as disdain for the south. But those who wish to disguise the motivation for the rebellion in something appearing to be noble love to assert falsehoods and spread fantasies of the kind above to replace the historical truth.
The slave power represented the elite and would-be aristocrats of 11 southern states who owned the vast majority of slaves and who alone profited by their subjagation. The majority of the white population was nearly as poor as the slaves themselves and benefited very little, if at all, from the continuation of the barbaric practice of slavery for the benefit of the few. The slave power controlled southern politics before and after the war. They were able to orchestrate "secession" in legislatures they controlled even when there was not a majority of popular sentiment in favor of treason. Eastern Tennessee, Northern Alabama, Northern Mississippi, Northern Louisiana, North Georgia, all of West Virginia, and all across Kentucky and old Virginia were huge numbers of citizens loyal to the union who were forced, through intimidation and coercion, to submit to the authority of the slave power. Had a popular vote been taken it is doubtful the 11 states whose legislatures passed acts of secession would have chosen rebellion over loyalty. Instead, perhaps 3 or 4 at most would have chosen treason over patriotism had the people any choice in the matter. But they were not given any choice because they had no voice at all in their political culture.
Read the words and listen to the voice of U.S. Grant in his memoirs on the subject of the conditions in the country leading up to the war. You will hear nothing of any fantasies about why the war was fought, but instead he discusses the reality.
This is from Chapter 16:
"When the election took place in November, 1860, I had not been a resident of Illinois long enough to gain citizenship and could not, therefore, vote. I was really glad of this at the time, for my pledges would have compelled me to vote for Stephen A. Douglas, who had no possible chance of election. The contest was really between Mr. Breckinridge and Mr. Lincoln; between minority rule and rule by the majority. I wanted, as between these candidates, to see Mr. Lincoln elected. Excitement ran high during the canvass, and torch-light processions enlivened the scene in the generally quiet streets of Galena many nights during the campaign. I did not parade with either party, but occasionally met with the "wide awakes"—Republicans—in their rooms, and superintended their drill. It was evident, from the time of the Chicago nomination to the close of the canvass, that the election of the Republican candidate would be the signal for some of the Southern States to secede. I still had hopes that the four years which had elapsed since the first nomination of a Presidential candidate by a party distinctly opposed to slavery extension, had given time for the extreme pro-slavery sentiment to cool down; for the Southerners to think well before they took the awful leap which they had so vehemently threatened. But I was mistaken.
"The Republican candidate was elected, and solid substantial people of the North-west, and I presume the same order of people throughout the entire North, felt very serious, but determined, after this event. It was very much discussed whether the South would carry out its threat to secede and set up a separate government, the corner-stone of which should be, protection to the "Divine" institution of slavery. For there were people who believed in the "divinity" of human slavery, as there are now people who believe Mormonism and Polygamy to be ordained by the Most High. We forgive them for entertaining such notions, but forbid their practice. It was generally believed that there would be a flurry; that some of the extreme Southern States would go so far as to pass ordinances of secession. But the common impression was that this step was so plainly suicidal for the South, that the movement would not spread over much of the territory and would not last long.
"Doubtless the founders of our government, the majority of them at least, regarded the confederation of the colonies as an experiment. Each colony considered itself a separate government; that the confederation was for mutual protection against a foreign foe, and the prevention of strife and war among themselves. If there had been a desire on the part of any single State to withdraw from the compact at any time while the number of States was limited to the original thirteen, I do not suppose there would have been any to contest the right, no matter how much the determination might have been regretted. The problem changed on the ratification of the Constitution by all the colonies; it changed still more when amendments were added; and if the right of any one State to withdraw continued to exist at all after the ratification of the Constitution, it certainly ceased on the formation of new States, at least so far as the new States themselves were concerned. It was never possessed at all by Florida or the States west of the Mississippi, all of which were purchased by the treasury of the entire nation. Texas and the territory brought into the Union in consequence of annexation, were purchased with both blood and treasure; and Texas, with a domain greater than that of any European state except Russia, was permitted to retain as state property all the public lands within its borders. It would have been ingratitude and injustice of the most flagrant sort for this State to withdraw from the Union after all that had been spent and done to introduce her; yet, if separation had actually occurred, Texas must necessarily have gone with the South, both on account of her institutions and her geographical position. Secession was illogical as well as impracticable; it was revolution.
"Now, the right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, either by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable. But any people or part of a people who resort to this remedy, stake their lives, their property, and every claim for protection given by citizenship—on the issue. Victory, or the conditions imposed by the conqueror—must be the result.
"In the case of the war between the States it would have been the exact truth if the South had said,—"We do not want to live with you Northern people any longer; we know our institution of slavery is obnoxious to you, and, as you are growing numerically stronger than we, it may at some time in the future be endangered. So long as you permitted us to control the government, and with the aid of a few friends at the North to enact laws constituting your section a guard against the escape of our property, we were willing to live with you. You have been submissive to our rule heretofore; but it looks now as if you did not intend to continue so, and we will remain in the Union no longer." Instead of this the seceding States cried lustily,—"Let us alone; you have no constitutional power to interfere with us." Newspapers and people at the North reiterated the cry. Individuals might ignore the constitution; but the Nation itself must not only obey it, but must enforce the strictest construction of that instrument; the construction put upon it by the Southerners themselves. The fact is the constitution did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to 1865. Its framers never dreamed of such a contingency occurring. If they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers.
"The framers were wise in their generation and wanted to do the very best possible to secure their own liberty and independence, and that also of their descendants to the latest days. It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies. At the time of the framing of our constitution the only physical forces that had been subdued and made to serve man and do his labor, were the currents in the streams and in the air we breathe. Rude machinery, propelled by water power, had been invented; sails to propel ships upon the waters had been set to catch the passing breeze—but the application of stream to propel vessels against both wind and current, and machinery to do all manner of work had not been thought of. The instantaneous transmission of messages around the world by means of electricity would probably at that day have been attributed to witchcraft or a league with the Devil. Immaterial circumstances had changed as greatly as material ones. We could not and ought not to be rigidly bound by the rules laid down under circumstances so different for emergencies so utterly unanticipated. The fathers themselves would have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not irrevocable. They would surely have resisted secession could they have lived to see the shape it assumed.
"I travelled through the Northwest considerably during the winter of 1860-1. We had customers in all the little towns in south-west Wisconsin, south-east Minnesota and north-east Iowa. These generally knew I had been a captain in the regular army and had served through the Mexican war. Consequently wherever I stopped at night, some of the people would come to the public-house where I was, and sit till a late hour discussing the probabilities of the future. My own views at that time were like those officially expressed by Mr. Seward at a later day, that "the war would be over in ninety days." I continued to entertain these views until after the battle of Shiloh. I believe now that there would have been no more battles at the West after the capture of Fort Donelson if all the troops in that region had been under a single commander who would have followed up that victory.
"There is little doubt in my mind now that the prevailing sentiment of the South would have been opposed to secession in 1860 and 1861, if there had been a fair and calm expression of opinion, unbiased by threats, and if the ballot of one legal voter had counted for as much as that of any other. But there was no calm discussion of the question. Demagogues who were too old to enter the army if there should be a war, others who entertained so high an opinion of their own ability that they did not believe they could be spared from the direction of the affairs of state in such an event, declaimed vehemently and unceasingly against the North; against its aggressions upon the South; its interference with Southern rights, etc., etc. They denounced the Northerners as cowards, poltroons, negro-worshippers; claimed that one Southern man was equal to five Northern men in battle; that if the South would stand up for its rights the North would back down. Mr. Jefferson Davis said in a speech, delivered at La Grange, Mississippi, before the secession of that State, that he would agree to drink all the blood spilled south of Mason and Dixon's line if there should be a war. The young men who would have the fighting to do in case of war, believed all these statements, both in regard to the aggressiveness of the North and its cowardice. They, too, cried out for a separation from such people. The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre—what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave-owners, as poor white trash who were allowed the ballot so long as they cast it according to direction.
"I am aware that this last statement may be disputed and individual testimony perhaps adduced to show that in ante-bellum days the ballot was as untrammelled in the south as in any section of the country; but in the face of any such contradiction I reassert the statement. The shot-gun was not resorted to. Masked men did not ride over the country at night intimidating voters; but there was a firm feeling that a class existed in every State with a sort of divine right to control public affairs. If they could not get this control by one means they must by another. The end justified the means. The coercion, if mild, was complete.
"There were two political parties, it is true, in all the States, both strong in numbers and respectability, but both equally loyal to the institution which stood paramount in Southern eyes to all other institutions in state or nation. The slave-owners were the minority, but governed both parties. Had politics ever divided the slave-holders and the non-slave-holders, the majority would have been obliged to yield, or internecine war would have been the consequence. I do not know that the Southern people were to blame for this condition of affairs. There was a time when slavery was not profitable, and the discussion of the merits of the institution was confined almost exclusively to the territory where it existed. The States of Virginia and Kentucky came near abolishing slavery by their own acts, one State defeating the measure by a tie vote and the other only lacking one. But when the institution became profitable, all talk of its abolition ceased where it existed; and naturally, as human nature is constituted, arguments were adduced in its support. The cotton-gin probably had much to do with the justification of slavery.
"The winter of 1860-1 will be remembered by middle-aged people of to-day as one of great excitement. South Carolina promptly seceded after the result of the Presidential election was known. Other Southern States proposed to follow. In some of them the Union sentiment was so strong that it had to be suppressed by force. Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri, all Slave States, failed to pass ordinances of secession; but they were all represented in the so-called congress of the so-called Confederate States. The Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Missouri, in 1861, Jackson and Reynolds, were both supporters of the rebellion and took refuge with the enemy. The governor soon died, and the lieutenant-governor assumed his office; issued proclamations as governor of the State; was recognized as such by the Confederate Government, and continued his pretensions until the collapse of the rebellion. The South claimed the sovereignty of States, but claimed the right to coerce into their confederation such States as they wanted, that is, all the States where slavery existed. They did not seem to think this course inconsistent. The fact is, the Southern slave-owners believed that, in some way, the ownership of slaves conferred a sort of patent of nobility—a right to govern independent of the interest or wishes of those who did not hold such property. They convinced themselves, first, of the divine origin of the institution and, next, that that particular institu