The People You’re Allowed to Hate
“This was a recognition of American terrorists.”
That is CNN’s Roland Martin’s summary judgment of the 258,000 men and boys who fell fighting for the Confederacy in a war that cost as many American lives as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq combined.
Martin reflects the hysteria that seized Obamaville on hearing that Gov. Bob McDonnell had declared Confederate History Month in the Old Dominion. Virginia leads the nation in Civil War battlefields.
So loud was the howling that in 24 hours McDonnell had backpedaled and issued an apology that he had not mentioned slavery.
Unfortunately, the governor missed a teaching moment — at the outset of the 150th anniversary of America’s bloodiest war.
Slavery was indeed evil, but it existed in the Americas a century before the oldest of our founding fathers was even born. Five of our first seven presidents were slaveholders.
But Virginia did not secede in defense of slavery. Indeed, when Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, March 4, 1861, Virginia was still in the Union. Only South Carolina, Georgia and the five Gulf states had seceded and created the Confederate States of America.
At the firing on Fort Sumter, April 12-13, 1861 the first shots of the Civil War, Virginia was still inside the Union. Indeed, there were more slave states in the Union than in the Confederacy. But, on April 15, Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers from the state militias to march south and crush the new Confederacy.
Two days later, April 17, Virginia seceded rather than provide soldiers or militia to participate in a war on their brethren. North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas followed Virginia out over the same issue. They would not be a party to a war on their kinfolk.
Slavery was not the cause of this war. Secession was — that and Lincoln’s determination to drown the nation in blood if necessary to make the Union whole again.
Nor did Lincoln ever deny it.
In his first inaugural, Lincoln sought to appease the states that had seceded by endorsing a constitutional amendment to make slavery permanent in the 15 states where it then existed. He even offered to help the Southern states run down fugitive slaves.
In 1862, Lincoln wrote Horace Greeley that if he could restore the Union without freeing one slave he would do it. The Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863, freed only those slaves Lincoln had no power to free — those still under Confederate rule. As for slaves in the Union states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, they remained the property of their owners.
As for “terrorists,” no army fought more honorably than Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Few deny that.
The great terrorist in that war was William Tecumseh Sherman, who violated all the known rules of war by looting, burning and pillaging on his infamous March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah. Sherman would later be given command of the war against the Plains Indians and advocate extermination of the Sioux.
“The only good Indian is a dead Indian” is attributed both to Sherman and Gen. Phil Sheridan, who burned the Shenandoah and carried out Sherman’s ruthless policy against the Indians. Both have statues and circles named for them in Washington, D.C.
If Martin thinks Sherman a hero, he might study what happened to the slave women of Columbia, S.C., when “Uncle Billy’s” boys in blue arrived to burn the city.
What of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, at whose request McDonnell issued his proclamation? What racist deeds have they perpetrated of late?
They tend the graves of Confederate dead and place flags on Memorial Day. They contributed to the restoration of the home of Jefferson Davis, damaged by Hurricane Katrina. They publish the Confederate Veteran, a magazine that relates stories of the ancestors they love to remember. They join environmentalists in fighting to preserve Civil War battlefields. They do re-enactments of Civil War battles with men and boys whose ancestors fought for the Union. And they defend the monuments to their ancestors and the flag under which they fought.
Why are they vilified?
Because they are Southern white Christian men — none of whom defends slavery, but all of whom are defiantly proud of the South, its ancient faith and their forefathers who fell in the Lost Cause.
Undeniably, the Civil War ended in the abolition of slavery and restoration of the Union. But the Southern states believed they had the same right to rid themselves of a government to which they no longer felt allegiance as did Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, all slave-owners, who could no longer give loyalty to the king of England.
Consider closely this latest skirmish in a culture war that may yet make an end to any idea of nationhood, and you will see whence the real hate is coming. It is not from Gov. McDonnell or the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Patrick J. Buchanan is founding editor of The American Conservative and author, most recently, of Churchill, Hitler, and the “Unnecessary War”.
COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM
Roland Martin, with a master’s degree in (Christian) communications, should not utter such wanton stupidity. Excellent article Mr. Buchanan.
I don’t believe that Gen. Sheridan ever said “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” He responded to a question from a reporter during his preparation for an Indian campaign by saying “The only good Indians I’ve seen were dead.” This was regarding The Good Indians in places like Oklahoma and Kansas who were also in conflict with the rampaging Sioux, Cheyenne etc.
Many whites, both civilian and military, expressed a desire to exterminate the Indians. But it never was the policy of the Army or the Federal government.
Of course this takes nothing away from Pat’s usually excellent column.
“They would not be a party to a war on their kinfolk.” Are you kidding me? Are you aware that West Virginia, which held a lot more Virginian kinfolk than their brethren in North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, seceded from Virginia and formed their own state because those non-slave owning Scots/Irish immigrants wanted nothing to do with slave owners? And Virginian troops raided into W. Virginia on a daily basis.
“As for “terrorists,” no army fought more honorably than Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Few deny that.” Well, those of us who aware of the fact that General Robert E. Lee and so many others of Confederate flag rank had been swearing fealty and loyalty to the Union since the time of their swearing in as cadet’s at West Point would readily deny that. To void a lifetime of sworn oaths to take up arms against those whom you swore to defend is to join ranks with the likes of Benedict Arnold, not Patrick Henry.
“Why are they vilified?
Because they are Southern white Christian men — none of whom defends slavery, but all of whom are defiantly proud of the South, its ancient faith and their forefathers who fell in the Lost Cause.”
Vilified? Spare me your elephant tears, won’t you? You have your column and air time on a daily basis, and aside from being referred to as an impotent old white supremacist who still doesn’t understand why Nixon was hated, no one cares enough about your silliness to vilify you. And your monument cleaning hero worshipers of the “Lost Cause” ought to think Sunday morning, while they are undoubtably in church practicing Christianity, about defending a way of life that not only permitted but engaged in the sale of children torn from the arms of their parents.
Btw, I’m an old white man who grew up in the deep south of the 50′s so spare me your lying bullshit about Southern gentry.
Neuyawker shows that when it comes to this historical question, there are irreconcilable differences concerning how the facts are to be interpreted.
“Vilified? Spare me your elephant tears, won’t you? ” Roland Martin called the confederate veterans terrorists? Did you read the first line of the article? Why shouldn’t the descendants of Confederate soldiers celebrate their history as other Americans do on Cesar Chavez and MLK day?
Yeah,we’d never exterminate native americans or southerners or phillipinos, etc. – unless they get in the way.
I’m on the right politically, but I’m dismayed by the increasing tendency of many on the Libertarian and paleoconservative Right to take up the cause of the Confederacy, while demonising Lincoln as a tyrant and warmonger.
It is understandable that Southerners would take pride in their heritage and traditions. But to claim that war was not fought over slavery is sham to allow the southern states to evade responsibility for buying & selling people like cattle. States’ rights was just a legal technicality — the “states rights” in this case being the right to maintain slavery until they saw fit to abandon it. Yes, Lincoln’s top priority once the war started was to preserve the union. That is true, but he was elected on an anti-slavery platform. He hoped to gradually do away with slavery without creating a national catastrophe. The Southern states would have none of it. Lincoln is castigated first, for interfering with the south’s internal affairs (states rights) then for abandoning it in a desperate attempt to hold the country together, the latter development being used to prove that Abe was never really sincere about ending slavery to begin with. Which one is it?
It is a hell of note when people foisting themselves off as anti-government pro-freedom libertarians look the other way at a system that institutionalized slavery and all that it represented, including Dred Scott and the Fugitive Slave act. I suppose, also, none of you would have had a problem extending slavery into new states entering the union?
For all the glorification of the antebellum south, it was an oligarchy that had nothing but contempt for “white trash” that made up most of its army, except, of course, when they were all united in fighting for the lost cause.
Up here in Pa. I saw a truck with a bumper sticker that read “my other toy has tits.” A Confederate flag was on the opposite side. Is this really the kind of mentality you want to be associated with?
My great grandfather from Indiana marched with Sherman to the sea and down PA Avenue after the War. I read a one volume history of the Civil War by, I believe, James McPherson (not the Union general). I emerged with the belief that the ante-bellum Southerners made outstanding arguments for States Rights. They resonate today. But the problem is that they used the arguments to defend the undefensible:. Slavery and then segregation. In spite of Mr. Buchanan’s usually thought provoking column, the one truly irreconcilable difference between North and South was not merely slavery, but the spread of slavery into new territories.. I have read that Lincoln commented that if slavery is not evil, then nothing is evil. If I were a native Virginian, I would honor the Confederate dead and indeed the Confederacy. But I also believe the governor should have include slavery in his proclamation.
As a teacher of logic I can find plenty on this page to let my students play around with but, BobbieMac, whatever one thinks of the first 90% of your essay, the closing will be in front of my students for their amusement and analysis!
I want to see if they can stretch their wings far enough to make an Olympian leap like that.
Thank you.
PJB is a great man and I believe that there should be a day to recognize the fallen of our nation’s worst war.
However, slavery was the ultimate form of cheap labor, which is our great problem today. Our pursuit of cheap labor is the reason our government allows millions of illegal aliens entry, so that the common citizen’s wages are kept in check or depressed. We also have shipped our manufacturing overseas where factory workers are paid peanuts.
I’d love to hear PJB address this aspect of the topic.
It was wrong for the North to prevent the South from leaving, but as a slave state the Confederacy also deserved to be devastated for their abominable crime. And every smug Southern gentleman should’ve been punched in the mouth as his slaves were given his plantation.
I’m mostly with BobbieMac here, a bit less so inasmuch as he seems to have more esteem for Lincoln’s actions than I, but very very much so as to his fine comments about so-called conservatives and libertarians having this weird fondness for the slave-holding South.
Moreover, I just can’t help but be dismayed by Buchanan’s sidling up to what increasingly strikes me as a kind of a deranged Right-wingdom. I know, I know, there are those on the Left still waging a culture war that gets these folks goat, but to me the story since the Sixties is how far the Left has moved Right. I mean … aside from his FDR/LBJ kind of health-care program—big but no more radical than theirs—what has Obama actually *done* other than continue Bush’s foreign policies? And what else is he or the Dems talking about doing that’s so radical? A possible illegal alien amnesty? But that would just be following in Republican footsteps. So what else is there?
And yet … all I see is this tea-party kind of pure emotionalism and indignant reactionism searching for something to justify getting near violently exercised over such as perceived slurs against the Confederacy, incredibly enough. And it’s just so insensate in its literal, totally illogical and blind fullness: Forgetting all of what BobbieMac noted as to the reality of what the South was really fighting to keep (in this day and age!); talking vaguely of Obama’s “socialism” at the same time he’s bailing out Wall Street same as Bush; having obsessions about Obama’s birth certificate or his middle name…. And now, on the literal heels of seeing our Vice-President spit in the eye by Israel, I see Liz Cheney whooping up the rabble at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference talking about *Obama’s* “shameful” and “disgraceful” treatment of Netanyahu. As if our President ought to be kowtowing to any foreign leader….
I’m sorry but some of these folks are just plain stupid. I could see lots of this kind of ferment if, say, Obama or the Dem’s had continued down the Culture War path that the far Left might have wanted years ago. Making affirmative action worse, blatant anti-Americanism, anti-gun agendas, racial divisiveness to the max and etc., but even the most Lefty of the Dems himself—Obama—isn’t about *any* of that now. Hell, he’s as much of a macho military guy as Bush was.
Seems to me what Buchanan ought to be doing instead of whooping up rabble is enticing those who might otherwise be a part of same into a still whopping but nevertheless sane, sound criticism of where liberalism is leading in terms of the size and intrusiveness of our government and what that means for this nation in terms of its economic sustainability, or privacy and liberty rights, and our international position.
I don’t like Obama’s health-care plan, I didn’t like Sonia Sotomayor, I probably won’t like his next pick, and I probably won’t like a whale of what he wants to do domestically otherwise too. But at least Obama and the mainstream of the Dem party today is acting on *some* reason and logic, however wrong they may be. How do you argue with someone who thinks Obama is a secret muslim in thrall to bin Laden? With someone who glorifies the slave-holding South? With those shouting “n_____” at John Lewis?
Precisely like BobbieMac said, who the hell wants to be associated with this kind of mentality?
Mr. Bush took the Republican Party and the reigning idea of “conservatism” right into a dead end. All on its own now it’s heading over the cliff of sanity. And Buchanan’s piece here is only speeding it on its way.
Join the S.C.V.
Nationally the confederacy is villified. In the southeast it’s the reverse. That’s not really as imortant as the underlying issue. The word “terrorist” should not be applied to every group of antagonists on earth. If we can apply the lable to the CSA then it certainly applies to the Nazis and Imperial Japanese. If it applies to them why not the British in the revolution, 1812, and all the other little skirmishes we had with them? We never actually fought Soviets except by proxy but they used intimidation and fear to keep their puppet states in line.
Soon we view every conflict in American history as part of a long struggle against terrorists. Thus any criticism of the war on terror is undermining the long heroic sweep of American history and to be as reviled as an endorsement of Al Queda.
As a southerner I am far more concerned about that than the endless stereotyping.
“We never actually fought Soviets except by proxy”
Actually, the U.S., under Woodrow Wilson, placed troops in Russia between 1918 and 1920 to combat the Bolshevik forces. This was connected to our entry into WWI. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O126-RussiSMltryntrvntnn191720.html Although there was technically no Soviet Union at the time, we did engage in combat with Russian troops.
Umberto Eco wrote that it is common for men at times to think they were born in the wrong decade. Buchanan clearly longs for days when certain groups of people knew their place. Of course, my guess is that if Buchanan were around in the South during the Civil War, that bum knee of him would have gotten him out of the draft just as it did during Vietnam.
My ancestors fought and died for the Confederacy. In looking at photos taken at the time they were mere boys in many cases. My family comes from upstate S.C. and we were not slave owners. I honor these men for their sacrifice in defending their home and family from northern aggression. Northerners can belittle us and call us racist but it will not change our reverence for our ancestors. We will continue to honor their sacrifice.
“Deo Vindice”
Pavlov’s dogs are amazed at the slobber here.
Apparently, the readers who are so quick to disagree with what Pat has written also abandon their study of history when it no longer suits their purposes. I note with interest that nothing has been said in response to The Emancipation Proclamation freeing only a portion of the slaves. And, if Lincoln was such a great and wonderful person, why did he delay issuance of the those excutive orders until after a battlefield victory? Why did he also disregard the Constitution and why did he allow his commanders to treat US citizens with such cruelty?? Contrary to popular belief, Lincoln was no saint. If you are going to study history study ALL of it.
History is a progression, and we often lose that progression with our 20/20 hindsight. This in convenient for those who want power more than the ‘truth’ they hide behind.
Are the ‘five of our first presidents’ terrorists, or ‘providers of safe haven for terrorists’, and should be labeled that because they held slaves and did not abolish it in 1778 – 1830? Should we throw Bristol, New Haven, Newport and many other Union port cities financing and providing the ships for the slave trade, into the Confederacy? Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey and Missouri as well, slave-holding states at the outset of the war supposedly in the Union? That it’s good policy for one segment of the US economy, Northern factories, should be able to deny ‘freedom of commerce’ to another segment, Southern raw materials producers (to trade with Europe instead) to the point of war, under their straw man of human rights? That there is no ‘conscious objector’ status for anyone and you’re either ‘with us or against us’ as the Union pressed on Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee?
Nobody has defended the ‘sale of children’ in any of this. Pat, as with the desire of paleoconservative movement, will put himself on the edge of the oxymoronic ‘truth’, to show the human condition is never ‘black and white’, and that the chattering classes are primarily interested in their own ascension, not the ‘truth’ and ‘history’ they shrilly parrot.
What about the politically correct’s banishing down the Orwellian memory hole the black-on-black slavery that existed years ago in Africa that made the white man’s crime easier?
What about the politically correct’s banishing down the Orwellian memory hole the de-facto black-on-black slavery that still exists in parts of Africa today?
Of course, these facts are no justification for the crime of slavery in America, but they do present it in a more accurate light.
Anyone who has any understanding of history and who is not a liar, must admit that economic issues, especially the protective tariff, were at least as important causes of the American “Civil War” as was slavery, or more accurately the issue of the expansion of slavery into the territories. However, history is written by the victors, who typically have little fidelity to the truth.
Yes, by all means lets celebrate one of the dumbest periods in our country’s history. Isn’t geographic tribalism great? “The place I happened to be born is better than the place you happened to be born and it’s history aught to be celebrated, remembered, studied, and puzzled over no matter how dumb it was.”
Pat, shark-jumping is a genuine sport appreciated by legions of die-hard fans, but you don’t get any extra points for repetition.
That said, trying to argue that the Southern Rebellion wasn’t about slavery is just silly. The secession proclamations made by the rebel states were all perfectly clear on the matter, as were the statements made by all the actors on both sides. You can only pretend that the South didn’t secede in order to preserve and extend the institution of Negro slavery if you ignore everything the people actually doing the seceeding said at the time.
I understand that certain white Southerners, and the Republicans who have rejected everything Lincoln actually stood for in order to claim them as an electoral base, have a vested interest in pretending that armed treason in the defence of a ‘States Right’ to enslave and exploit the ancestors of tens of millions of their fellow citizens wasn’t actually about ‘slavery’, but it was.
Still, the election of a big-eared outsider with a background in law who is nowhere near as extreme in his views as his defeated opponents say he is to the Presidency of the United States had to set all kinds of alarms going off south of the Mason-Dixon line.
And history does have a tendency to repeat itself.
Why can’t we all just “GET THE HELL OVER IT”! Learn from the mistakes made and shut the hell up.
When slavery was introduced into North America, it was practiced in every corner of the world by virtually every people in the world. It is primarily a political response to the problem of conquered peoples and what place they can have in a society in which they cannot be citizens and from which they cannot be allowed to leave or forcibly sent elsewhere without danger to their former masters.
Prior to the American Revolution, every state in the Union contained slaves. Slaveowners in the Northern states (you know, like New York and Massachusetts) were able to sell their slaves off to Southern states, an option the South did not have. Northern states continued to make money off of slavery, primarily through tariffs which disproportionately affected the Southern export of cotton and financed the public works, canal building, and other industrial welfare programs that made the North into an industrial powerhouse. In other words, the North was fine with slavery as long as they could skim off the profits tax-wise. Secession meant one thing: states like New York were no longer going to be able to skim off the South, so, naturally, Northern states had to invade.
Northerners will never accept how complicit they were in the slave trade, how hypocritical and cynical their “heroic” stand against slavery was, and how ruthlessly they destroyed their political rivals. Indulging in ridiculous postures of rage against what can only be described as a chauvinistic image of “cracker rednecks” is not a replacement for realizing that, yes, it is possible that the Confederates understood something essential about real freedom that they never have.
It is interesting to note that citing slavery’s existence is other countries at the time is to somehow excuse the crime. As people well know, that ancient model of democracy that so many traditionalists cite, Athens, also had slaves. What was unique about slavery in the Americas is the explicit racial angle it took. After all, what prevented slave traders from bring in white slaves from Europe at the time? Could it be that idea that a white man holding another white man as a slave did not make any sense at the time? If the South was told they could only keep slaves if all races could be equally held in bondage, does anyone think they would say yes?
Andersonville.
Once again, we observe: one man’s terrorist is another’s hero.
to the Germans, the French Resistance was a terrorist group.
“Once again, we observe: one man’s terrorist is another’s hero.to the Germans, the French Resistance was a terrorist group.”
Not to mention the German army officers who plotted to kill the Fuhrer. I believe there were at least three attempts to assassinate Hitler. Most of the participants, including the great General Rommel, lost their lives. We, in the West, regard them as heroes, but the Germans took a different view.
The question is not the defense of slavery. Who defends it? Who wishes to see it again? No one!
The question (or questions) is as follows:
1). Will the South be allowed to preserve its heritage and honor those men who did fight for the Confederacy (including Jimmy Carter’s ancestors) or will it become a gigantic re-education camp where the Confederacy is compared to Al Qaeda and Jefferson Davis to Hitler and all the things associated with the Confederacy are declared evil and must be removed and the bone of Confederate soldiers dug up and burned to ashes in mass pyres. In other words, do you believe the South was not just wrong, but horrible too? Hmmm?
2). Will the causes of states rights and nullification be allowed to stand on their own or will they forever be tainted by “slavery” even thought Northern state had no problem not enforcing the Fugative Slave Act (nor would have I either).
The only people who are obsessed with slavery are the Cultural Marxists and their amen corner within the Orange Line Mafia (Boaz, Reason Magazine).
My confusion: Pat is correct in citing Lincoln’s protective tariffs in creating a dynamic economy. Yet the tariffs were why the South suffered and seceded. What am I suppose to make of that?
Sean Scallon wrote:
“The question is not the defense of slavery….
The question (or questions) is as follows:
1). Will the South be allowed to preserve its heritage and honor those men who did fight for the Confederacy….
I agree that it’s important to define precisely what question you’re talking about to get anywhere, but disagree with Sean’s characterization of same. Given the background to Buchanan’s article the question really is “Will the South be allowed to preserve its heritage and honor those men who did fight for the Confederacy *and pretend, by failing to mention same, that they fought for an tremendously sullied cause?*”
That, after all, is what started this: McDonnell’s failure to mention the latter. And as amended I think the answer is—and should be—no. No the South cannot so pretend.
Granted, Martin’s talk of the South’s soldier’s as being “terrorists” is terrible, and stupid, and sneering and demeaning. And those who lost relatives fighting for the Confederacy ought certainly be allowed to honor their dead. But, remember, approximately for each Southerner who lost a relative fighting that fight a Northerner lost a relative too. So by not mentioning that, unfortunately, the Southerners who suffered and died did so in the pursuit of a terribly sullied cause the logical conclusion is that the Northerners who suffered and died were at the very least and in some great measure in the wrong, and that just doesn’t fly.
In short, one can die honorably, for a dishonorable cause. But honor is also about truth, and it’s necessary to admit the last part of this equation when its true so as to not sully those who died honorably for the *honorable* cause.
And, as to the causes of states’ rights and nullification and of course secession too, yes they will always be tainted by slavery. But that’s also part of what made the South’s cause dishonorable. That is, invoking what was honorable or arguably honorable in those causes in the aid of its larger dishonorable cause. Who else, after all, *is* there to blame for that?
I’m not on the side of those who try to flaunt their moral finery by, say, objecting to the flying of the Confederate flag, because I think everyone who flies almost every flag recognizes that the cause it stands for may be terribly tainted or sullied, and they of course mean only to honor what wasn’t or isn’t about that cause. But by objecting to the demand to simply acknowledge the tainted and sullied aspect of the South’s cause this does those Confederate flag wavers no favors as it essentially says that no, they do *not* only mean to … honor the honorable in their cause, but the dishonorable too. And by doing so it is *they* who are doing more to sully what was honorable about their cause than anyone else.
Pat, you’ve obviously been taking your cues from Sarah Youbetcha of late. What this post DOESN’T mention is the number of Irish slaves in colonial America, and the fact that the “white Christian men” of the 19th-century South wouldn’t deem YOUR Catholic ass or MINE worthy of shining their shoes!
Anyone competent student of the relevant history knows Lincoln didn’t invade the South to end slavery. That was an afterthought, as see the date of the Emancipation Proclamation – which didn’t even apply in the North until sometime later. Lincoln’s (documented) hopes for the black population amounted to mass resettlement in Africa. The worst riots in our history were the New York draft riots: whites lynching the blacks they blamed for the war.
I also seem to recall that General Grant’s wife freed her slaves sometime after R. E. Lee freed his. Meantime, nearly a million dead … I have Southron uncles and cousins buried all the way from the Tidewater to the Mississippi and I’ll be goddamned if I can’t honor their memories and demand respect for their sacrifice. Most of my people had been Unionists up to the time that Lincoln called for troops to put down South Carolina.
A few things to keep in mind when discussing “sullied causes”
Odom wrote:
“I have Southron [sic] uncles and cousins buried all the way from the Tidewater to the Mississippi and I’ll be goddamned if I can’t honor their memories and demand respect for their sacrifice…. A few things to keep in mind when discussing ‘sullied causes.’”
There’s probably no cause that the fight for hasn’t been sullied, Odom, but that doesn’t make them all equivalently sullied. So while it sounds like your uncles and cousins died as honorably as any Northerner, you aren’t going to get the same respect for their sacrifice as there is for the Northerners who died because of the relative better cause the latter sacrificed themselves for.
Doesn’t sully your ancestors’ honor, but it does implicate their judgment at least. You can’t after all truly be arguing that there’s no difference between causes; even honor itself is a cause, isn’t it?
I was raised in the South, lived part of my childhood under Jim Crow laws, and saw the rise of the Republican Party once Civil Rights legislation was passed that banned segregation.
In high school we learned in detail the Civil War. However, what my teachers and text books in Georgia public schools failed to mention was that an estimated 40% of southern men went to go fight for the Union army. In Georgia a county was renamed “Union” county since 100% of their men fought for the Union.
It is a gross misrepresentation of history for Gov. McDonnell to present the South as united against the Union. Today’s Virginia is nearly 1/3 smaller than it’s colonial days due to the fact that in mountain areas of the South, slaves were rarely owned and plantation economy was not part of the culture.
The strategy of the GOP to use the racial issue in the 1960’s South was and is still very successful. Democrats in the South still struggle with remnants of the Dixiecrats (most of whom finally bolted to the Republican side in the 1980’s though some still hold on as “centrists”). However, the GOP with the likes of Gov. McDonnel, Perdue and the legacy of Strong Thurmond has clearly been the party of choice for segregationists. In 2002 Georgia elected its first Republican governor since Reconstruction who won the election by promising to put the Confederate Flag up for a referendum. In Southern politics today, the GOP is certainly the party of “white supremacy”.
BTW, I am white and suffered severely during my education years for my family’s position in favor of Civil Rights, Voting Rights, integration, and the Christian concept that we are all brothers. Many, many white families were threatened and economically punished because of their progressive views. Segregationist South never was and still is not a believer in democracy and freedom.
The justly celebrated classical liberal Lord Acton favored the Confederate cause, writing to Robert E. Lee that his heart broke at Appomattox. The reason was hardly that he loved slavery, but rather that he saw states’ rights as the great bulwark against democratic despotism. Lincoln’s war resulted in some 620,000 dead soldiers and the devastation of the South. Does anyone believe that if Lincoln had never lived, if there had never been a Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation Atlanta would be a slave city today?
As many above me have said, just because one knows the facts of the Civil War does not make one an advocate of slavery.
The Civil War began over States’ Rights and Lincoln’s desire to preserve the Union. Only when it became apparent that the only way to rally troops would be to have a Cause did Lincoln decide to free the slaves.
This doesn’t take away from his actions at all; without Lincoln, our nation would look very different today. And I strongly suspect that had he not been assassinated, he would have put us back together again much better than his successors, and we wouldn’t even be having this argument. (I am not happy with how Reconstruction was handled. Not happy at all.)
As many above have stated, the South fought with as much nobility and honesty as did the North, if not more so.
Before I get attacked as a Southern Conservative, let me just say EMPHATICALLY that I am proud to be neither of those things. I learned my Civil War history from a Northerner as well…just one who cared more about facts than convenient fairy tales.
Why not just let the old geezers of the Sons of Confederate Veterans tend to the graves of their ancestors, without jackasses like Bob McDonnell giving them official sanction? Or is it considered good Republican policy to honor an act of treason — taking up arms against one’s country? Roland Martin was stupid to use the word “terrorist” in this context, which PJB then used as the starting point of his silly apologia for the (deservedly) “lost cause.” The term he should have used was “traitor.” And what about the UNION VETERANS, and their living descendants, from Dixie? Does PJB not know that every Confederate state (except South Carolina) sent at least a regiment to the Union Army? Can they honor their descendants, and fly their battle flags in Virginia? Or would that be considered a “provocation?”
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Now here are a couple of gems from PJB’s foolishly sentimental pen:
“Two days later, April 17, Virginia seceded rather than provide soldiers or militia to participate in a war on their brethren.”
Really? So why were the people of Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, etc. “their brethren,” while the people of Pennsylvania, Maine, etc. , & ultimately West Virginia, NOT “their brethren?”
“But Virginia did not secede in defense of slavery. Indeed, when Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, March 4, 1861, Virginia was still in the Union. Only South Carolina, Georgia and the five Gulf states had seceded and created the Confederate States of America.”
And why did those seven states secede? Hint: they didn’t do it for the sake of “states rights.” They seceded because they believed (wrongly) that Lincoln was a radical abolitionist. Virginia apparently seceded in their knowing defense.
“Why are they vilified?
Because they are Southern white Christian men — none of whom defends slavery, but all of whom are defiantly proud of the South, its ancient faith and their forefathers who fell in the Lost Cause.”
Give me a break. They are vilified because because they continue to insist on state sanctioned recognition of an unworthy cause, which attempted to perpetuate human bondage and perpetrated treason. Is that what they are “defiantly proud” of? And is their “ancient faith” more ancient or worthy than the faith practiced by their Northern countrymen (also Christian white men), or by the slaves within their midst?
“As for “terrorists,” no army fought more honorably than Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Few deny that.”
Well, you ALMOST have me there. If you mean that Lee did not encourage his troops to mistreat civilians, or that his troops acted with courage, I would have to agree with you. Of course, Lee’s army had only a brief sojourn on Northern territory, but that point is taken. However, I wonder what Lee’s position on the Confederate government’s order regarding captured black Union soldiers, or their white officers? They were to be killed upon surrendering, not sent to POW camps. I know he didn’t personally favor slavery, but how did he deal with this dishonorable order?
As the old pacifist saying has it: “A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end.”
I’ve always felt compassion for the Confederate rank-and-file who through romanticism and sheer ignorance laid down their lives to perpetuate a system that had for generations worked economically against them (Tea-Partiers, anyone?).
As for the Southern landed slave-owning gentry, they simply needed killing.
There seem to be a lot of people for whom the fact that Lincoln didn’t issue his Emancipation Proclamation until 1863 means that, before that date, the issue of slavery didn’t impact on the causes of Southern Rebellion.
Which makes them silly. FYI.
The same people also seem to think that Lincoln must, therefore, take the blame for starting the Civil War. Because if it wasn’t about slavery, it must have been about States Rights, and anyone on the wrong side of an argument about States Rights – must – be the Bad Guy in any scenario.
Which is also, as above, a sign that someone is being very silly.
Lincoln was moderate on the slavery issue, so much of a moderate that the Southern Elites who promoted seccession had to lie through their teeth in order to make him look like a dangerous radical. He bent over backwards to accomodate the South, but the Secessionist leadership wouldn’t accept anything short of wholesale capitulation on the slavery issue.
They knew that slavery couldn’t survive unless it had the full force of the Federal Government behind it. When the election of 1860 signalled that the country at large didn’t much care for the South’s arrogance, they committed treason by trying to break up the Union and create another country that would defend and expand slavery by force.
Lincoln didn’t want to ban slavery outright, or quickly, but the South left him no choice. He delayed emancipation until he had a major victory in the bag because he knew that The North that had elected him wasn’t fighting a war to end slavery, but the South – was – fighting to preserve it, and emancipating the slaves in the wake of a massive Union victory in defence of the capital was something that would fly through Congress and finally kill off the prospect of Britain and France recognising Confederate independence.
Anyone who claims that this was ‘Lincoln’s War’, or that he somehow forced The South to defend itself, clearly knows zero about the topic.
I’m curious as to when the long march through TAC began.
The simple question is, if the south didn’t have slaves, would the civil war have happened. No. Therefore, slavery was the cause of the civil war.
“No Southerner should ever think he will be allowed to defend his homeland and her people without being insulted for it. If you’re going to defend the South, you must be prepared to defend it down to the last boll weevil on the scraggliest cotton patch in front of the most decrepit tar-paper shack in Mississippi.
“So widespread is anti-Southern prejudice, especially among the intellectual elite, that the man who presumes to defend the South might as well begin by foreswearing any further ambition in life. Assume at the outset that you will be denounced and castigated and exiled to outer darkness, and resolve that this daunting prospect will not deter you from your duty.
“Ask yourself this, my Southern friend: Who are these people who insult you, your friends and your family? Why does it give them so much pleasure to insult you? And why do they imagine that you will let the insult pass by unnoticed?” (Robert Stacy McCain)
Screw the Yankees, dead ones and alive ones both.
I mean the “ideological” Yankees, not the geographical ones necessarily or the baseball team. Like that Phillbin fellow.
“Were it not for the wounds that Lincoln inflicted upon the Constitution, it would have been infinitely more difficult for Franklin Roosevelt to carry through his revolution, for the coercive welfare state to come into being and bring about the conditions against which we are fighting today.” (Frank Meyer)
Snaggle-Tooth Jones wrote:
“Screw the Yankees, dead ones and alive ones both.”
It’s interesting how seemingly extreme, unreasonable statements that one might be tempted to dismiss (though Snaggle-Tooth subsequently and graciously de-barbed it to a goodly degree) can raise the eminently reasonable and debatable issue at the fundamental core of things.
I.e., was the Civil War worth it? On the whole, are the majority of us—one people now, like it or not—better off for it, or worse?
I’m aware for instance of the widely held and seemingly sophisticated idea that if the South had indeed been allowed to secede, and all those lives and limbs saved, economics would have eventually abolished slavery anyway, and from there the perhaps natural line of thinking is that the Union would have reformed given that the great issue dividing its former parts had evaporated.
Perhaps its my natural pessimism about human affairs but for my part I doubt it. And indeed I suspect that even when the South abolished slavery—which I think it was bound to do at some point at least for any number of reasons—people on both sides would have still found reasons and ways not just to continue to want a separate existence but also to continue encouraging at least some chronic enmity and friction towards the other. Look at the long history of geographically abutting European states, or Southern American ones.
Maybe this wouldn’t have ever resulted in a different war, but, economically and internationally speaking, it certainly would have left the two states weaker than the one which resulted at least, no?
Indeed I don’t know that once secession was allowed that only two states would have resulted. What after all would have then kept the Western states from fissioning off, or etc.?
I dunno; would either or both of these scenarios have been better or worse for everyone on the whole? For just some but not others?
A possibly somewhat relevant comparison (but somewhat only, esp. due to their different culture): On the whole are South Americans better or worse off for their fragmented nationalities? I suspect not, especially economically, but I don’t dispute that it’s an arguable thing, and that for certain at least *some* are better off than others.
And what about Europe? Isn’t the move towards the EU at least some recognition that they’re better off as one rather than many? Or is that just true now, and economically only?
Was it worth it?
A single page of writing cannot be used to solidify one way or the other what the Civil War was about.
The mountains of evidence supporting slavery as being the MAIN cause of the Civil War makes your one page attempt at rewriting history a damn joke.
Since 1562, when the Spanish brought the first slaves to North American shores, racism has permeated this continent. Blacks were still fighting for basic civil rights in the 1960′s-1970′s. Native Americans – does anyone even give a crap about them anymore? Racism still permeates our society; not as bad as it did before, and that “peculiar institution” is gone, but to say that the Civil War was not about slavery (and racism) is like saying the American troops in the mid-east have nothing to do with oil. Honestly, you probably believe that too.
That the war was fought over slavery, Abe Lincoln the wonderful, etc., are parts of the modern American myth system. You cannot dent these people, even though their country is caving in on them in great part for having the federal goverment the civil war made possible. The irony is that Southerners and Sons of Confederate Veterans, except for me, are very patriotic, proud to be Americans and all that business. They can be quite sickening (to me anyway) in this regard. Diversity is hypocrisy, but hypocrisy is America’s calling card. If they would be a little more reflective, Southerners might realize they have more in common with America’s “enemies” (victims) than they realize.
Why does the party of Lincoln turn against Lincoln? What is at the bottom of the hate directed toward the US government?
Why is the government letting GM buy back the shares that the government took in exchange for the loan that kept GM alive if the government was trying to take over the auto industry? I for one am glad and proud that our governemnt saved GM and gave the US a counterforce to Toyota.
I wish the government enforced even stricter mining regulations or would that be the government taking over mining? Saving lives is what I expect of our government.
The Republican party of my youth wasn’t owned by a foreign media mogul who doesn’t care if the people of the US suffer as long as he makes more money. Murdoch wants to be free of all government regulation. If he can weaken the governement, he maes more money.
Let’s look at the leader of Fox News in China. Under the supervision of Rupert and James, Star TV bent its programming to favor the brutal Chinese regime. In 1994 it dropped BBC News, which had frequently angered Chinese officials. One of the reports that angered the Chinese was of the brave soul who famously stood up to a flank of Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square. The BBC replayed that video too much, so Murdoch had the network banished.
By cooperating with the communist censors in China, Murdoch earned the friendship of some very important people. The article in the Times noted that…
“His courtship has made him the Chinese leadership’s favorite foreign media baron. He has dined with former President Jiang Zemin in the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing and repeatedly met other members of the ruling Politburo in Beijing, New York and London. Television channels affiliated with Mr. Murdoch beam more programming into China than any other foreign media group.”
Uh oh. So this relationship was a boon to his financial interests. Do you think that the $50 billion ad market in China had anything to do with that?
Does Virginia have the right to declare a Confederate History month? Many of the Civil War battles were fought on her soil. That is a fact. Leave them alone! Mr Buchanon didn’t raise the issue. He is simply resonding to them being caled terrorist. Is his point about Sherman true? Did Sherman do those things? Yes he did. That too is a fact. People on the left do want to villify those who do not agree with them. The comments here prove that!
Ancient faith of the South? All 200 years of it? Propafrigginganda.
KXB: Justifying slavery is not the issue, any more than justifying war is the issue. I’ve heard slavery compared to kidnapping, which assuredly it is; just as war is organized murder on a national scale. And yet people are frequently proud of their military service, and very few people call veterans murderers because their countries have sins in their past (or even present). Why? What’s the difference? In fact, these two examples are intrinsically related: slavery is first and foremost the result of conquest in war, which is why it is not primarily a relationship between individuals but between citizens and non-citizen war captives, or more precisely, between conquered and conquering nations.
If you look for the actualization of justice on earth, you are rather typical of this day and age. Earlier ages were more cynical. They did not believe that justice existed in the arena of war between different nations. One could not, to them, simply liberate slaves en masse without great danger to the regime; after all, what loyalty could slave-foreigners be expected to display to a country not their own which kept them enslaved?
As far as the southern states “invention” of race-based slavery, it is a myth. The Arabs and indigenous African nations who practically ran the slave trade on that continent for centuries would have laughed at the notion that they shared the “race” of the slaves they captured for profit. So-called “white” slavery, in which millions of southern Europeans and Slavs (that’s where we get the name “slave” from) were bought and sold in Ottoman Turk, North African, and other Middle Eastern markets existed into the modern era.
And let us not forget the Northern U.S. colonies and states, who, yes, did engage in slavery for at least a century and half, both in terms of using and holding slaves as well as major investments in the slave trade. I mention this not to “justify” anything, merely to point out that if the southern states were wrong to secede from the Union in 1860 because they practiced slavery, then all of the American colonies were wrong to secede from Great Britain. In fact, in the Declaration of Independence one of the American grievances is specifically the fact that the Brits have incited slave rebellions. Nevertheless, the citizens of Rhode Island are never blamed for their role in the slave trade (Brown University was built from the Brown family fortune, which derived chiefly from shipping slaves from Africa), nor New York City (a major slave market in the 18th century), nor Massachusetts (which shares with Virginia the honor of introducing African slaves into the North American continent). After slavery had proven unprofitable due to the northern climate and other factors, the push to emancipate led, not to immediate freeing of the slaves, but selling them to southern plantations. Once the Northern states no longer had any direct economic stake in slavery, it was easy for them to demonize their political rivals–namely the southern states–with what they had only abandoned themselves a generation earlier. This isn’t my point, but Alexis DeTocqueville’s.
I don’t lionize the Old South, but I doubt blame them for things most nations, states, and peoples are guilty of when it suits their purposes. I don’t assign injustice to them unjustly, in other words. If slavery was a crime, it was one the entire nation was guilty of in one way or another. Why don’t start your blame game there?
Tom B. and A.J. Phillbin assert that the southern states fought in a “tremendously sullied” or “dishonorable” cause. Even if one grants them this assertion, it proves too much: then every slaveholding nation in history is subject to invasion by any other nation claiming the liberation of slaves as their motive. Considering that virtually every nation in existence has practiced legal slavery at one time or another, any nation has a ready-made excuse to take over another, for one may claim that even if legal slavery is “technically ended” in a country, the injustice afflicting ex-slaves is still so pervasive that an outside, more moral people or nation is practically “forced” to take over.
Did you know that the European nations that essentially cut Africa up into their little empires in order to exploit the continent for its natural wealth (and its indigenous peoples in starvation- wage-slavery)–did you know that one of their primary claims for the justice of their conquest was to eliminate the African slave trade? Which they did in the course of their imperialistic robbery for over a century, leaving behind the human rights/economic mess that is modern Africa. Did the African nations bring this on themselves because they were a little behind the times on emancipation, unlike, of course, the moral Europeans who had let all of their slaves go a WHOLE 50 OR 60 YEARS BEFORE? Wow, those Brits, French, Belgians, and Germans sure were a moral lot, weren’t they?
If you want to argue that slavery is a demeaning, harsh, and often cruel institution for any people or race or nation to undergo, then I and most thinkers in the Western world (ancient and modern, southern and northern) are with you. But condemning slavery is one thing, being absurdly naive about the political and economic motives of military invasions is something else. Prior to some of the southern states’ secession acts, the U.S. Congress tripled the tariff rate on the southern states. What sales do you think those tariffs were taken from? Cotton–slave cotton. If the North had really wanted to end slavery, they would have diverted the tariff revenue towards compensation for slaveholders to liberate their slaves. After all, compensated emancipation was good enough for every other nation in the Western Hemisphere which abolished slavery in the 19th century–why not the southern states? But that was not Lincoln’s, or the Northern states’ original motive. Lincoln made it clear that he would not invade the south UNLESS they refused to pay the tariff, which had just been tripled by a Congress under Northern control. In other words, the Civil War was about money and power. An independent South would have been able to buy and sell goods to and from Europe tariff-free, and Northern industry (which was, after all, enabled by tariff-subsidized public works like canals and protected through tariffs from foreign competition) would have suffered immensely or even collapsed. The North was fighting for survival, not freedom.
Any discussion of slavery should begin with the fact that slavery is a voluntary system. Every one has a choice. It might not be a good choice but it is a choice nonetheless.
For example, thirty years before the Civil War, a man by the name of Nat Turner decided he no longer wanted to be a slave. He and a group of fellow slaves went on a rampage of killing that left more than fifty whites dead. His revolt only lasted a few days but came within a hair’s breadth of ending slavery in Virginia. If a few more slaves had revolted slavery would have ended in the South decades before the war and with hundreds of thousands of fewer deaths.
Remember, slavery, like drug trafficking was first of all, an economic system. The South had lots of land and little labor so slavery was economically viable. In the North there was less land and abundant labor, they had sweatshops, tenement ghettos and a system that was in many ways far worse than slavery. The slave owner had a financial interest in keeping his slaves healthy and reasonably content. The northern mill owner or coalmine operator had no such interest. Labor was cheap and easily replaceable.
We should also remember that the only thing North had to do to end slavery was to boycott slave-grown cotton. The North wasn’t anti-slavery enough to give up profit margin. Northerners were a bit hypocritical in their self-righteousness, like a man who condemns drug trafficking while getting rich selling coke spoons to dealers. Also, like drug trafficking, remove the profit and you remove the motive.
As to state’s rights, remember, only 5% of White Southerners owned slaves. It is hard to believe that the other 95% went to fight a war over something in which they had no stake. They all had a stake in state’s rights. Also, 12% of free Black Southerners owned slaves. In fact some of the largest slave owners were black. Black slave owners, on average, owned more slave than their White counterparts.
Finally, General Watie was a slave owner. He led a brigade that fought brilliantly. General Watie was a full-blooded Cherokee. His me were volunteers from the Cherokee, Choctaw and Creek Indians. General Jo Shelby also had large numbers of Indians fighting for him, I wonder if they were racists too. Now that you have the information, let’s discuss slavery intelligently.
TomB asks, “Was it worth it?”
The answer to that question depends upon whether or not Lee was writing prophetically when he opined in 1866, “The consolidation of the States into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.” His correspondent Lord Acton lamted, “I grieve more for what was lost at Appomattox than I rejoice at what was gained at Waterloo.”
Looks to me like Lee nailed it, and that Acton’s lament was justifed. Or, in the words of a League of the South blogger, “Who can look at the power-grabs, ruinous deficits, and distant wars this government is waging today at the expense of voiceless, powerless Americans and not conclude Robert E. Lee and Lord Acton were right?”
Union isn’t always “worth it”, Mr. B. Just ask those who suffered under Soviet rule.
Snaggle-Tooth Jones wrote:
“Union isn’t always ‘worth it,’ Mr. B. Just ask those who suffered under Soviet rule.”
Just as potentially apt an example as the non-Unionization of Europe or South America, for sure. And what a thoughtful statement from Lee (and post recounting it and etc. from you). Thanks.
I just dunno; in one sense for sure Unionization allowed the U.S. to be an “abnormal” country at least after WWII if not WWI: what most Americans today would however say meant allowing the U.S. its “greatness” beyond that of most if not all other countries. But maybe that view won’t last and that “greatness” will come to be seen as at least eventually becoming a net over-bearingness; I dunno.
One funny thing is that no matter which side a person’s on in this Civil War issue so many see it as a tragedy of almost Biblical proportions that might, relatively easily, have been avoided in favor of a better outcome. So how come it wasn’t? How could both sides which admit it was a tragedy have blundered into such a supposedly needless calamity?
Seems to me it has at least something to do with narrow-perspective fixations. Lincoln’s and the North’s on “Union,” forgetting that we had rather gloriously de-unionized ourselves from Great Britain to start with. And the South’s with an over-blown sense of honor maybe. Both of which, in hindsight now, can seem way excessive in terms of their true value and cost.
Sobering in its prompting of thinking about how humans can avoid such future things: How to get and keep the proper, larger perspective? To see our obsessions and fixations of the day as just that, of *this* day perhaps only…?
Can seem to be something beyond our fundamental nature and ability.
Thanks again Mr. Jones.
Secession was about states’ rights, but those rights explicitly included the right to own slaves. Mississippi’s official statement of secession says, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery,” and “There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the union…”
The people who campaigned for secession filled their speeches with rhetoric like “Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality.”
The vice-president of the Confederacy said, “Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [of the equality of races]; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.”
I can go along with the idea that the whole thing was botched, the war was horrible, the southern states should have been left to secede, that slavery should have been abolished peacefully, the way it was almost everywhere else in the world, etc., etc. But the states seceded after the election of Lincoln because they perceived a threat to the institution of slavery.
Source: “Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War” by Charles B. Dew.
Roland. Thanks for your comments. You just lowered CNN’s ratings even more. You now have 37 million viewers who will never watch CNN again.
Fox News Management
An interesting lot of commentary … golly, two high moral grounds.
Actually, the first slave was brought to what became America in 1529, And, of course, some of the Amerindians practiced slavery. However.
The main question is: Was it worth it?
In answer to that, I ask you historical experts, what other country had to fight a so-called civil war to end slavery? Great Britain took six years of peaceful compensated emancipation to solve that problem.
And really, if you want to support Lincoln regardless of the facts, you should know those facts and defend his own words on many subjects — as well as his Constitutional violences IN the North. Suspension of habeas corpus, jailing newspaper editors who criticized him, interfering with a state legislature (Mayland, IIRC), exiling an Ohio congressman, and much more.
On the subject of secession, examine the words of Thomas Jefferson. And study the events that persuaded the New England states to consider secession from the Union at another time. New York City once thought seceding from the country and setting itself up as an independent city-state was a good idea. And read of the Black Codes in some of the northern states like Illinois and Indiana. Lincoln’s political heritage extended from Alexander Hamilton, through Henry Clay’s “America System”, in a word, mercantilism — a strong central government, tariffs, and a central bank.
Just a brief summary with the thought: Do Not Oversimplify.
As always these conflicts between the money classes translate into gargantuan blood-lettings for the poor and the working class. The latter, lacking the analytical tools fostered by a good education, end up swallowing raw the rhetoric of one or the other side.
Consider the following article from Sherman’s instructions to his troops before his famous/infamous March to the Sea. Note the clear apprehension of a difference between the attitude of the rich and the industrious poor:
“VI. As for horses, mules, wagons, &c., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit, discriminating, however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor or industrious, usually neutral or friendly. Foraging parties may also take mules or horses to replace the jaded animals of their trains, or to serve as pack-mules for the regiments or brigades. In all foraging, of whatever kind, the parties engaged will refrain from abusive or threatening language, and may, where the officer in command thinks proper, give written certificates of the facts, but no receipts, and they will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion for their maintenance.”
As to the elimination of slavery in the South through political bargaining and financial compensation (as happened in England): Did the Southern slavers allow for such a possibility?
As I understand it, they bolted the Union the moment Lincoln was elected – like our Republicans of today, they showed absolutely no will for political compromise.
The War was about slavery which ultimately meant money – and the poor of both sides paid for it with their blood, as they do even now in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Jose.
Zzzzzzzz.
Snaggle-Tooth,
Pity, I’ve learned a lot from the posts on this forum but absolutely nothing from your last one. My apologies if I touched a nerve – it was purely unintentional, I swear.
By the way, I found your elevation of Lee in the context of the very words in your proffered quote truly confused if not utterly bizarre. There were no more “voiceless, powerless Americans” than the slaves. And how anybody could manage to use Lee in an admonition against our current “distant wars” is quite simply beyond me.
Lee was a butcher; and primarily of his own men. In a well-ordered world, he should have been hanged.
And, sure, the Confederates fought bravely during the Civil War. But so did their moral equivalents: the Nazis and the Japanese during WWII.
Alexander Stephens’ argument concerning the natural inferiority of slaves was actually quite standard for the entire country at the time he made it; even abolitionists, who found the enslavement of any human being abhorrent, expressed similar sentiments about the supposed inferiority of the Negro. And in a sense, such an argument makes sense: slavery is a horrible institution precisely because it degrades a people to the point where they no longer fight for their own independent existence, free to live according to their own laws, on their own land, etc. When we say that slavery “dehumanizes” men, we are essentially comparing slaves to beasts. Now the argument against slavery states that this condition is not natural in that it is the creation of law, and a mere law that tells you that you are a slave does not by that fact make you one. However, as Aristotle pointed out, people possessing natural virtue are better able to secure their political freedom in the first place. In other words, if a people exists in slavery for a long time and shows little or no determination to get out of it, their degradation tends to become a self-reinforcing loop. The real question is why the Negroes did not revolt en masse, as their masters often feared. As DeTocqueville wondered, other minority nations like the American Indian tribes did not submit to slavery under any threat or compulsion, so why did American blacks? In any case, the fact that they did not made them severely dependent on the “mercies” of whites; emancipation was given to them at the discretion of the North. In fact, what blacks have even today, I would argue, is not true political freedom. The only real solution would have been for them to have their own state (not in Africa, but here on the North American continent).
Whether or not slavemasters asked for compensation is less important than whether they were ever offered any. I suspect some compensation schemes were floated, but none ever got traction. The goal in the North was to curtail Southern political influence; compensated emancipation would only have deprived the North of its claim to moral superiority, as well as unite the Northern and Southern democrats against the abolitionist Whig-Republicans. The Whig-Republicans were the party of the National Bank, protectionism for Northern industry, and centralized federal control. An independent southern confederation, deriving its capital from European cotton sales and bank loans, would have deprived the North of its chief funding source and rendered it into an economic backwater little different than Canada.
I tend to believe slavery was on its way out in the South like everywhere else; some commentators are right to point out tensions between poor white labor and rich plantation owners employing “free” slave labor. Nevertheless, when the slaves were liberated, they received enormous hatred from poor whites with whom they still competed (only now without the political protection of their owners). This is why emancipation must always be accompanied either by return to the homeland or the establishment of a new state. Otherwise, the ex-slave is either little better off or worse.
The purpose of all states is to provide a means for the richest guys to protect their economic interests. The rich guys who controlled the State governments in the South wanted to protect their economic interests that included slaves as property. The rich guys who controlled the State governments in the North wanted to protect their economic interests, which included taxing the Southern States in order to pay for “internal improvements” in the North as well as restrict foreign competition for their “emerging industries.” When these interests could not be reconciled in Washington, D.C. under the “social contract” that States from both factions had entered into voluntarily (several with caveats that they could indeed secede at a later time if the Constitution didn’t work out), then secession was the peaceful and legitimate (consent of the governed/Tenth Amendment) course chosen by the Southern rich guys to protect their economic interests. The CSA was no libertarian haven; indeed, it was still a means to provide control by the most concentrated economic interests.
However, the central mitigating factor in this conflict has not been mentioned directly. That is: Who invaded whom? Any discussion of the purpose behind an aggressive act (especially war) must center on the purpose of the aggressor, not the aggressed. The party being aggressed against must be able to defend against that aggression if there is to be any sense of justice. The argument that slavery may have been the “why” behind secession does not make it the “why” as to the aggression that subsequently occurred is very pertinent. That not a peep about wanting to free slaves was mentioned while the opposite offer of maintaining slavery was made by Lincoln before invading the Southern States; that the Emancipation Proclamation had an out clause that Southern States could keep their slave institutions if they would just stop rebelling; and that Lincoln constantly assured the slave owning States that remained in the Union he would not interfere with their slave owning if they continued to support his war are all most telling.
To suggest that Lincoln and his racist rich guy clients in the North had some benevolent purpose in mind to “free the slaves” when they invaded the Southern States instilling a policy of genocide against the Southern civilian population is intellectually dishonest. Indeed, it is a myth created by the victors to provide comfort from the evil effects of murdering, raping and pillaging that harmed blacks as well as whites in the South to a self-righteous Northern population. How could self-anointed crusaders otherwise maintain an air of superiority to this day without upholding the shibboleth of “evil slave owning southerners deserved everything they got and that’s why we did what we had to do.”
The naïveté inherent in believing politicians and their sycophant intellectuals who come up with crusading propaganda long after they have made a decision to murder for money like common thugs, especially in order to soothe one’s ego, is all too prevalent today. Just because the propaganda has been around for a very long period of time is no excuse. I fear that many of our grandchildren will likewise believe that the U.S. Imperial Federal Government invaded Iraq to bring them “freedom” and sneer at the fact that Iraq was a sovereign state that posed no threat. This leads to ideas like, say, supporters of Iraqi “States Rights” are simply terrorists.
Pardon me if I am a bit sceptical of the whole “The Civil War was fought by the Union to end slavery!” refrain. The simplistic view of good anti-slavery Unionists fighting bad pro-slavery Confederates is not even suitable for third graders. Here is a simple quiz:
Q1: Was Maryland part of the Union?
A1: Yes
Q2: Was Maryland a state where slavery was allowed?
A2: Yes
Mayland is not alone. Slavery was legal through much of the Union. Check Kentucky. Or Missouri. Or Delaware. Or West Virginia. There were even still slaves in New Jersey through the entire war! Heck, there were slaves working on building the US Capitol Building after the war was started. Read the Emancipation Proclamation; it very clearly says that the only slaves it proclaims free are those who do NOT live under the control of the Union. Read what Lincoln said in his first Inaugural speech. He said that he would support the purposed Constitutional Amendment to make slavery legal forever, and that there would be no war or other interference — just as long as the South sent their taxes in on time. The fact is, the Union HAD slaves, just not as many as the more agricultural South. In short, the myth that the war was fought to rid the US of slavery is just that — a myth.
If we hope to be honest on the North’s role in the war (and NO, it was not a “civil war”, it was a war of secession) let us be equally honest about the South. Did the wealthy and powerful of the South support seperation for their own greedy benefit? Absolutely! Just like in the North.
There is, though, one more very important thing that both North and South have in common. The AVERAGE Union soldier and the AVERAGE Confederate soldier did not start the war, they did not profit from the war, and they did not fight either for or against slavery as an institution. Profit, power and control of other humans (either by slavery or by dollars) is something that is always the domain of the wealthy and the well connected. The average soldier on both sides fought (so he thought) to protect his family, his community and his buddies. The average Union soldier fought to save his nation, the Union, from people he thought were rebels. The average Confederate soldier fought to repel people who he felt were invaders.
It has been 150 years. Are we as Americans still so divided (and so poorly educated) that we cannot see that while the rich always have their wars, the AVERAGE American soldier of the Civil War was someone we can admire? Can’t we just agree that as horrible as the war was, at least the one good thing to come out of it (whether planned or not) was the end of slavery?
Only the military conflict ended in April, 1865. The ideological conflict continued to simmer because, in general, the Northern people pursued a course through history driven by materialism, radical egalitarianism and imperialism while Southerners still held to traditional, orthodox Christianity, a hierarchichal view of society and a non-interventionist view re foreign affairs. This conflict between two inimical worldviews has erupted lately as the long train of abuses by the federal govt. that Southerners always resisted has now become so blatant that even yankees are alarmed. However, the yankee seems confused and conflicted between trying to uphold his tradition of Lincoln hagiography and making exculpatory arguments to justify the War of Northern Aggression, while denouning the policies of Obamanation, so maybe this proud descendant of Southern soldiers and slaveowners can help.
I read posts on this topic frequently and you can just about compile a list of Confederate FAQ’s along these lines.
1. For all the nitwits who think Gen. Lee, President Davis, the Confederate soldier, et al, were traitors or committed treason, please just go urinate on the Washington or Jefferson monuments; you are effectively doing the same thing when you tar our Confederate Founding Fathers with obloquoy for declaring and fighting for their right to self determination as did our Colonial Founding Fathers.
2. Come up with an acronym for the tired old shibboleth “It-was-all-about-slavery” (IWAAS). It will save us a lot of time in spotting that rubbish argument. The alternative would be to actually read some original source documents from the period or something by Thomas DiLorenzo explaining it was really all about the South paying 70 – 80% of the federal tax burden with only 30% of the representation in congress.
3. Antelbellum Southern slavery was not a sin, not evil and was not some hellish oppresion. Says who? Says about 1800 years of Church teaching on the matter from St Paul to Jonathan Edwards (a New England slaveholding puritan, by the way). So please, if you’re going to keep harping on that argument, at least admit that its unbiblical, un-Christian, secular humanism you are expounding as your touchstone.
4. Do you think the prevalance of slavery in the South justified the invasion, murder and pillage by the northern armies? Really? Well, then I’m sure you’ll agree that since many of us view the acceptance of “Gay Marriage” in certain NE states as an outrage against human dignity and morality, you wouldn’t mind if we get the chance one day to invade New England, murder 1/4 of the young men there and carry off as much plunder as possible, then impose military occupation and steal the land title as well, will you? After all, we can brush aside all your remonstrances with “Well, you just fought to preserve sodomy rights”
5. There is always some vile piece of dog excrement that argues that Confederates were moral equivalents to the Nazis. In addition to the plain stupidity of this, we are deeply offended by the despicable anti-Southern bigotry of being compared to Nazis. Nazis were neo-pagan totalitarians who waged offensive wars of invasion against their neighbors and persecuted/exterminated minority groups. Confederates were polar opposites on each of these points. If there is a “Nazi” parallel to be drawn here, it is between the Total War policies of Lincoln and Hitler. Got that, sh*t for brains?
6. If Virginia, Texas and other Confederate states are going to have to grovel about slavery whenever they talk about Southern history, then shouldn’t the New England states similarly crawl on their knees and mention all the slave ships that sailed from their ports, the family fortunes built on the slave trade and exploitive way that women and children were abused in their textile mills in the 19th century? Shouldn’t New York always mention the slaves they burned at the stake and hanged in 1741 as a staple of any proclamation concerning their history?
Just a few thoughts. Deo Vindice.
“The contest is not over, the strife is not ended. It has only entered upon a new and enlarged arena.” – Jefferson Davis
“The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.” – Jefferson Davis
Well, I for one will bid farewell to arms (i.e. this forum).
I’ve been Devil’s Advocate for at least one position – but, I still don’t know what to make of this conflict and what, if any relevance, it has for us today.
Americans are such a heterogeneous and mobil lot that it would be absurd to assert that one is an unalloyed Southerner or unalloyed Northerner any more. The same goes for race: all Black Americans have a significant admixture (thanks to the good ol’ plantation owners) of European genes. One would have to be fairly irrational to deny that for a large (and growing) number of White Americans, the converse is also true.
To paraphrase Enrico Fermi: I am still confused but possibly on a slightly higher level.
Good article. However, it is not “undeniable” that the union was preserved. The 14th Amendment, forced upon the South at bayonet point by the Lincolnites, gave us such niceties as Roe v Wade. Clearly, the union existing before the war has NOT been preserved.
Sarah Allen asked, “if the south didn’t have slaves, would the civil war have happened. No. Therefore, slavery was the cause of the civil war.” Really? Please explain, Sarah, why slaveholding New Jersey and Delaware were not invaded and actually fought FOR the union.
Mad Doc MacRae wrote: ” the Confederacy also deserved to be devastated for their abominable crime [of slavery].” Do you also think that New York, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts “deserve to be devastated” since they also participated in this “abominable crime” for many years? Perhaps you think they all deserved to have been wiped out by the British in 1812?
I considered joing the SCV about ten years ago, as I am interested in history, and like the idea of learning more about the period and memorializing CSA ancestors (I had already replaced two gravestones prior to this). The organization took a sickening lurch to the right while I was organizing my paperwork though, and when I received a new invitation to apply, nearly one-third of the pamphlet was dedicated to a sickening screed writing off tales of Andersonville’s suffering as Yankee lies. Having two x-great-uncles there, one of whom died and the other never fully recovered, I shredded my application on the spot. No organization can mix propaganda and history and not have the history rendered worthless.
When the journalists want to pick apart the identity of the Tea Partiers, and obsess over their whiteness, their anger, and their gender, we should ask, why no articles asking, “Who are these bailed out bankers?” or “Who are these crooked bankers who caused the great recession?”
They tend to be Jews, older, male, and VERY GREEDY! Why are they so greedy? Where do they come from? What do they want? Are they angry?
Rubin Summers Bernanke Greenspan Dimon Blankfein Fuld Greenberg
Oy Vey!
Euphronius:
“The organization took a sickening lurch to the right while I was organizing my paperwork though. . . .”
Well, that’s only because it started out as “sickeningly” right, then later evolved in the direction of becoming a mere meet and greet club that posed no intellectual challenge to anyone, and then one day recently, it rediscovered it’s original mission.
The charge from its founder Stephen Dill Lee:
“To you, Sons of Confederate Veterans, we will commit the vindication of the Cause for which we fought. To your strength will be given the defense of the Confederate soldier’s good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his virtues, the perpetuation of those principles which he loved and which you love also, and those ideals which made him glorious and which you also cherish. Remember, it is your duty to see that the true history of the South is presented to future generations.”
Align that statement with the SCV’s salute to the Confederate flag:
“I Salute the Confederate Flag with Affection, Reverence, and Undying Devotion to the **Cause for which it Stands.**”
Now, any SCV member who takes this language seriously is going to come to terms very quickly about what is required of him. Sounds to me like you weren’t personally up to it.
Others of us are, however. We know that the Confederate cause by its very nature is anti-liberal, which these days means anti-Yankee, to the core. We can survive lurches to the right very comfortably, thank you. And we will indeed defend and guard the Confederate cause, in accordance with Lee’s charge and our salute to the Christian Cross of St. Andrew.
—Populist Pat is, if you pay attention, really acting as
right cove for the ongoing dumbdown, fold and sellout to
the staggeringly geocidal Red Chinese regime.
Catch his persistent downsizings, and tut-tutting of
that staggering legacy whenever he addresses it.
Very, very much in the Skull n’ Bones mode of “Daddy made his money in Chinese opium” –guilt, denial, enabling and
cynical enmeshment. ESP. galling on this, the once again
‘mysteriously overlooked’ 60th Anniversary of the epically
relevant —-KOREAN WAR…
AMEN
Mr. Shivers,
It looks like I touched a nerve – which (of course) was entirely my intention and completely makes my day!
But, please don’t go and have a coronary.
That would be such a shame: The world needs many things but none more than rabid 21rst Century neo-Confederate like you.
On a more substantive note: I always felt that the Confederates willingness to throw away their lives on but a single command from one of your windbag cracker Southern generals was their greatest contribution to mankind.
In fact, I think the entire Confederacy should be the posthumous recipient of a Darwin Award (look it up in Wikipedia).
Mr. Pardinas: didn’t you say you were leaving? (4/14, 2:47PM)
You might as well go, your most recent post showing that you’ve spent what little intellectual ammunition you had to begin with.
P.S., Mr. Pardinas’ comments here have been generally marked by utter mononity, including the predictable comparison that moonbats like him make between the Nazis and the Confederates. Nothing wrong with that comparison that some time spent in a library wouldn’t cure. In his book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, Jim Webb notes this “Nazification of the Confederacy” that half-educated liberals such as Mr. Pardinas opine on so dully, but says that anyone who attempts to compare the Nazis and the Confederates knows nothing about either National Socialism or Southern Conservatism. And indeed it is so. All one has to do is to first open his mind and then read some books. Pardinas being the dogmatic liberal-lefty he is, I don’t think he’ll get past that first hurdle.
Mr. Jones,
I’m done.
Mr. Jones,
FYI: Ad hominim attacks are a sign of haplessness.
They are de facto admission of inability to present one’s argumenta within the bounds of reason.
It makes you look weak.
But I understand: You Confederate boys were always way too impulsive – which was part o f the reason why you lost.
Cheers!
I thought you said you were done. Twice now. And yet you come back for more.
Funny behavior from someone who finds my argument “weak.”
BTW, it’s “ad hominem”, Dr. Pardinas. But in addition to making an argument “against the man”, which would otherwise be fallacious except that you’ve earned it, I’ve shown how patently idiotic your Nazi/Confederate comparison is. Anyone who argues on that level need not be taken seriously, and indeed deserves whatever derision is heaped upon him.
Mr. Jones,
You keep sniping at me as I try to organize an “orderly retreat.”
For the record – things are not always as they seem: I favor the commemoration of the Confederate fallen (albeit not necessarily their cause).
And I most definitely have the highest admiration for people like Euphronius (above) who tend lovingly to their graves.
As to my exact political affiliations: If I were such a mindless liberal, Why would I subscribe to and read TAC?
The world is not all black-and-white Mr. Jones, is all I’m saying.
I’ve had my fun, and I’m most definitely out of here.
This time I mean it!
“As to my exact political affiliations: If I were such a mindless liberal, Why would I subscribe to and read TAC?”
(Dr. Pardinas is listed at HuffPuffPo as a donor to the presidential campaign of the ultra-lefty Howard Dean.
http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=name&lname=Pardinas&fname=Jose )
Very interesting discussion.
The two front lines on this topic are not facing each other, funnily. In the black-powder smoke of the discussion, few seem to take notice of this.
If two people kill each other, both families may grieve for them and hold their memory dear. US families may grieve for their fallen in what they perceive to be a war for democracy in the middle east. Iraqi families may grieve for the fallen in what they perceive is a defence of their country against invassion.
In the discussion that follows, the Iraqi may point to the fact that the war was about oil, and the USAmerican may point to the soldier killed was there to fight _for_ the people that killed him. Both may be right, but both are missing the point. That someone bravely (meaning knowing full well it meant possible death) went somewhere to do something they deemed right does not mean the person may not be killed by someone who goes by the same description.
I find especially worth of notice the formula found in the original post: ‘They would not be a party to a war on their kinfolk’ – So instead they followed a course of action that pitted them against… whom?
On the beaches of Normandy, good (meaning law abiding and caring for their family) men died. On all sides. Possibly some serial rapists and child molesters died too. On all sides. One side was mostly constituted of people who had, for up to 12 years, served a criminal government. This does not rob their families of the right to mourn them. But. And here it comes: But the survivors should not forget to remember every aspect of their heritage. So while it is individually sad that a German soldier died on D-Day, his death in the broader context of WW2 meant a sooner end of Nazi rule in Europe. Germans are generally thankful the Allies won, yet most fondly remember their grandparents nevertheless.
This divide in emotional response to events is hard to bridge, but it is possible. Good luck.