The President and the Confederacy

[jimmy olsen]

How the FUCK are Confederate war veterans traitors?

Secession was illegal. Thus those who fought for the Confederacy were taking up arms against their own legally constituted government.

Wrong. I can understand governors, or major business people in the South understanding this, but can one really expect some little farmer with 100 acres on the banks of the Mississip to hear all the stories about the war and think 'I think I'm gonna side with the Yankees on this one' ?

No!

Not treason!

Many did. All confederate states did contribute regiments to the Union Army.

With the exception of South Carolina. (Assuming we're just talking about white regiments, SC did supply some black regiments)

[jimmy olsen]

How the FUCK are Confederate war veterans traitors?

Secession was illegal. Thus those who fought for the Confederacy were taking up arms against their own legally constituted government.

Wrong. I can understand governors, or major business people in the South understanding this, but can one really expect some little farmer with 100 acres on the banks of the Mississip to hear all the stories about the war and think 'I think I'm gonna side with the Yankees on this one' ?

No!

Not treason!

And yet it happened.

A county in Alabama actually seceeded from the Confederacy because they didn't agree with the war.

Jefferson Davis sent in the troops to put it down. Ironic, eh?

Are you thinking of Jones County Mississippi?

[Berkut]

Winston County, Alabama.

They didn't *actually* secede of course, but they threatened it.

The idea that the entire South was in support of secession is a myth. And in fact, the support for secession very closely tracks the population of slaves in the area. So apparently plenty of people other than the aristocracy understood the war was largely about slavery.

Anyone doing even a cursory examination of the political issues of the preceeding decades would understand this as well. It was *all* about slavery.

[jimmy olsen]

Winston County, Alabama.

They didn't *actually* secede of course, but they threatened it.

The idea that the entire South was in support of secession is a myth. And in fact, the support for secession very closely tracks the population of slaves in the area. So apparently plenty of people other than the aristocracy understood the war was largely about slavery.

Anyone doing even a cursory examination of the political issues of the preceeding decades would understand this as well. It was *all* about slavery.

I totally agree, one only has to look at the situation in Appalachia to understand that.

Hadn't heard of Winston County Alabama, but looking it up it seems similar in circumstances to Jones County.

[The Minsky Moment]

She remarked how the South and the slavery economy was actually not jsut bad for the slaves, but bad for Southerners as well. The south had, even then, much higher illiteracy rates among whites, and a much lower median standard of living.

She didn't really go into WHY this was the case, and I wonder at her assumption that this was a result of the slavery culture, as opposed to other factors. I think she was getting at the idea that the slavery culture made industrialization difficult, which kept the South in a state of relatively backward rural subsistence farming for most Southerners. 

The antebellum South was a pretty diverse place geographically and economically.  There was always a certain conflict of interest between the big plantation owners (who typically were operating fairly close to a major source of water transport) and the more farmsteader types and townspeople in places like East Tennessee or upcountry Georgia.  The planter elite were for free trade and small government, but some of the upcountry Southerners could see the benefit in canal systems, roads, and other internal improvements that would help link them with the growing national economy.  Hence the popularity of the Whig Party in certain parts of the South in the 1840s.  But southern Whiggery would be destroyed by the clash over the institution of slavery.

I think that is at least one reason why the South became an economic backwater -- while the north pushed ahead aggressively with canal building, roads, and later railways, the South did not.  The northern states knitted together a powerful unified economic zone stretching from the Atlantic coast to the new cities on the shores of Lake Michigan, all linked together by the most modern transport links then available.  The South didn't and hence much of the South was cut off from the rising new continental economy, with the exception of a few entrepot cities scattered along the Atlantic Coast and the Mississippi River.  And with regard to the later, the slave system ensured that these would be relegated to the role of distribution point for primary goods.  Basically, the South consigned itself to be a colonial-style producer of primary goods for manufacturing metropoli to the North and overseas, and with the upcountry nearly cut off entirely from economic interaction from the rest of the country.   This situation would persist for decades after the war, until the interstate highway system, air travel, and air conditioning provided the infrastructural and technological basis for the integration of the South into the greater national economy.

[DontSayBanana]

Tim pops his cork at stupid shit? OUTRAGE!

Tim, please read this carefully. The president's recognition of the sheer human cost to both sides of the American Civil War is by no means equal to the condoning, pardoning, or even toleration of treason or of slavery.

Also, our government was set to be a representation of the people and for the people. In addition to the "treason" that you're bitching at, the ACW also represents our government's failure to live up to that principle. That we had to resort to bloody violence to subdue and bring to heel our peers in eleven states meant we violated the first eleven words of the US Constitution that we hold so sacred in order to serve what we perceived as a greater good. As far as I'm concerned, the Confederate soldiers deserve recognition for that failure and not to be marginalized so that we don't come to that point again.

Now lay off the goddamn caffeine.

[Ed Anger]

I enjoyed everybody abusing Tim today.

[DGuller]

Why deal with the problems of today when we can deal with the problems of... two centuries ago!

Tim, you are a waste of flesh, bone, plastic and radiation therapy.

No plastic in me, it's all metal. And I never had radiation therapy either.

Will the metal ever come out, or will you be buried with it?

[grumbler]

The antebellum South was a pretty diverse place geographically and economically.  There was always a certain conflict of interest between the big plantation owners (who typically were operating fairly close to a major source of water transport) and the more farmsteader types and townspeople in places like East Tennessee or upcountry Georgia.  The planter elite were for free trade and small government, but some of the upcountry Southerners could see the benefit in canal systems, roads, and other internal improvements that would help link them with the growing national economy.  Hence the popularity of the Whig Party in certain parts of the South in the 1840s.  But southern Whiggery would be destroyed by the clash over the institution of slavery.

I think that is at least one reason why the South became an economic backwater -- while the north pushed ahead aggressively with canal building, roads, and later railways, the South did not.  The northern states knitted together a powerful unified economic zone stretching from the Atlantic coast to the new cities on the shores of Lake Michigan, all linked together by the most modern transport links then available.  The South didn't and hence much of the South was cut off from the rising new continental economy, with the exception of a few entrepot cities scattered along the Atlantic Coast and the Mississippi River.  And with regard to the later, the slave system ensured that these would be relegated to the role of distribution point for primary goods.  Basically, the South consigned itself to be a colonial-style producer of primary goods for manufacturing metropoli to the North and overseas, and with the upcountry nearly cut off entirely from economic interaction from the rest of the country.   This situation would persist for decades after the war, until the interstate highway system, air travel, and air conditioning provided the infrastructural and technological basis for the integration of the South into the greater national economy.

Indeed.  The political elite of the South had always been the planter class, land-and-slave rich but cash poor.  The real fear that they had of industrialization was the rise of a political rival in the "new rich."  They were largely able to frame the issue, though, as an issue of avoiding the crowded cities, hordes of immigrants, pollustion, crie, and urban poverty that so characterized the early industrial revolution (and accurately described big chunks of the North), and so got the support of the yeoman farmers in those areas of the South still diminated by the planter political class.

In those areas of the South where the planters had never had much power, the attractions of succession and the fears of the industrial revolution had much less traction.

I have always regarded the acts of succession more about fear of the future than about any rational decision that southern values were incompatable with the Union.  One can read tons of pre-war letters, speeches, newspaper editorials, and the like all decrying the fact that Northern moneybags were enslaving the South with their railroads and the like.

Of course, the idyllic Jeffersonian South that was being "defended" by the common Confederate soldies did not exist and had never actually existed.  But how were they to know?  The local teachers, judges, lawyers, and preachers all told them it did, and that it was worth dying to defend.

I would note that the "more perfect Union" the Northern soldiers were willing to die for didn't actually exist, either, but at least the differences between the talk and the reality were somewhat smaller.

[Sheilbh]

I think it's quite a nice touch actually.  I mean it's common for especially French and German leaders to commemorate the normal soldiers who died in the world wars of either nations and to visit each other's war cemetaries.  I think Reagan went to a cemetary of German soldiers - though this became controversial because there were some SS officers there - if that's acceptable, and I think it is, I don't see how acknowledging and remembering the dead of your own country, even if they fought against your nation, can be a wrong or a bad thing.

[Viking]

I'm sorry pipple, but in terms of evilness

Confederate = Nazi = Bolshevik = Chinese Communist

[Jaron]

Yeah.. no.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Maybe Obama could send a wreath to the shrine for Japanese War Dead, too, since we've moved on since WWII and are best buds now.

[The Brain]

Couldn't be bothered to read the whole thread but did Obama actually send a wreath to the Mohammed Atta memorial? Fuck that.

[Lettow77]

Regarding 'finally' honouring these veterans, the Confederates have recieved a memorial from every president since wilson.

All Obama did was continue the trend.  A man named Ed Sebesta made great efforts to see that this wasnt so- I had a ball taunting him.

The rest of the thread, most particularly the claims the South basked in ignorance compared to the South, or that the Confederate cause equates to the Nazi one, are things I wont begin to argue.