What Should the the United Daughters of the Confederacy do

[viper37]

They were all gold diggers whoring after pension money.

I like your explanation! 

[grumbler]

The South was not defeated because of Jefferson Davis's ineptitude (though he made a lot of mistakes). It was defeated because Abe Lincoln held the North together long enough for its irresistible military potential to be realized.  The Confederates lost the war when they fired on Fort Sumpter.

Let's hope the modern A. Blinken can do the same.

[Razgovory]

The weird thing about the US civil war is that the North didn't really try that hard.  They never went into the full war production and while they did impose a draft very few soldiers were drafted.  I agree with Grumbler, there was no way in Hell that the South could have won.  To even think about winning they would have needed all three border states to voluntarily join the South, and even then it's not likely.

[mongers]

The Royalist never stood a chance against the resources commanded by parliament and eventual military might of the New Model Army. 

[Valmy]

The weird thing about the US civil war is that the North didn't really try that hard.  They never went into the full war production and while they did impose a draft very few soldiers were drafted.  I agree with Grumbler, there was no way in Hell that the South could have won.  To even think about winning they would have needed all three border states to voluntarily join the South, and even then it's not likely.

They needed to win big victories early on in the border states...they did not.

[Valmy]

The Royalist never stood a chance against the resources commanded by parliament and eventual military might of the New Model Army. 

They needed to take London early on...they did not.

[The Larch]

There is still an organization calling itself the  United Daughters of the Confederacy?

Oh yes. This organization has been the standard bearer for neo-Confederate propaganda for over 100 years.

Are you under some kind of impression we have healthily dealt with that period of our history at this point? Less than 1% of Confederate monuments has come down despite the gnashing of teeth for all the statue cancelations.

No, I was not under that impression.  But I was also not aware the tip of the hat to the confederacy was so blatant.

Well it was created by literal daughters of confederate veterans. They were more than just tipping their hats but staking a political movement for honoring the Confederacy. They are responsible for most of the big confederate monuments across the South.

I would have thought that we would be talking about the daughters of the daughters of the daughters by this point.  I am not surprised it was created.  I was surprised it still exists.

AFAIK it's a hereditary organization, so its membership can increase exponentially over time, in theory. And having given themselves an objective with no end in sight such as keeping alive the memory of the truly bullshit Lost Cause theory they'll keep being a nuisance, as their initial success has given their cause a dignity it doesn't deserve.

Truly the shortcomings of Reconstruction must be one of the US' greatest historical failures.

[alfred russel]

Truly the shortcomings of Reconstruction must be one of the US' greatest historical failures.

I think reconstruction only failed when viewed from a modern lens with a modern view of the war.

It is always hard to establish the goals and motivations of a democracy, but there were two overwhelming ones at the end of the war / start of reconstruction:

1) to ensure the continued preservation of the union,
2) to ensure the final and total eradication of slavery.

Both of these were achieved.

There were people in the North that wanted to achieve something more and elevate former slaves to a more equal status in society, but equality was not the aim of the north and to make it such would have upended the entire war effort. The 15th amendment giving black people the right to vote didn't get through congress until 1869 (as much because republican struggles in the elections of 1868 convinced them they needed more voters) and wasn't ratified until 1870. States like New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and California rejected the amendment (before final ratification).

[alfred russel]

Also guys, should we keep this on topic about the chair? Do we really need another ACW hijack?

[Valmy]

Also guys, should we keep this on topic about the chair? Do we really need another ACW hijack?

Denikin needed to coordinate his offensive with Kolchak...he did not.

Wait no that's a RCW hijack.

[Razgovory]

Well, while we are hijacking the a thread for the US civil war I discovered something about my own ancestors that fought in the war.  It's actually an interesting story.  No, wait, it's the opposite of that.  My grandmother remembered that her grandfather (my great, great grandfather), wore his old Union uniform everywhere he went (this would have been in the late 1920's or 1930's.).  That's not that surprising, insanity runs in my family.  What I learned though was he only moved to Missouri in 1867, he must have fought in an Ohio unit.  I don't know why he moved to Rat's Ass, Missouri.  Again he was probably crazy so that might be it.

[viper37]

The South was not defeated because of Jefferson Davis's ineptitude (though he made a lot of mistakes). It was defeated because Abe Lincoln held the North together long enough for its irresistible military potential to be realized.  The Confederates lost the war when they fired on Fort Sumpter.

Let's hope the modern A. Blinken can do the same.

The South never managed to present a united front the way the North did.  They never managed to leveraged the manpower from all States, develop a coherent strategy, assign high offices to people based on their competence and not their political affiliations or simply have their railways used to efficiently deliver supplies where they were needed.

The whole organization of the Confederacy was a big mess and it's a miracle it held for so long.  Tax collection was deficient, use of slave labor varied from State to State, for some reason Black folks didn't rush to defend the Confederacy once they were given an alternative with the North (who would have thought! ) and, well, all in all, each State was there for its own, not especially caring about the global war effort but pulling for its own side.

The more I think about it, the more I believe Longstreet's (and others) strategy of "stalling" in the East and fighting in the West would have given them a decent chance at tiring the North enough so they would have eventually agreed to a peace treaty.

That's a lot of "ifs", a lot of conditional history and would have required a different leadership with different generals, so that's like, highly improbable it could have happened, but if you compare Lincoln's conduct of the war with Davis' conduct of the war, you see a clear difference on what a good leader can do.  Well, you kinda seen first hand what a bad leader can do too, I think, for the last 4 years

[Threviel]

The CSA sending more resources west would be nice, more fodder for Grant and his homies and hopefully a quicker end to the war. Perhaps Lee would lose a battle or two more and that might also hasten things. Stalling in the east was what they were barely able to do with the historical resources allocated.

Otherwise I believe it was a matter of logistics. The US is huge and no matter how they do it would take time to build the logistic capability to support huge armies far into the south. And huge armies were needed to pacify the south.

[alfred russel]

The South never managed to present a united front the way the North did.  They never managed to leveraged the manpower from all States, develop a coherent strategy, ... or simply have their railways used to efficiently deliver supplies where they were needed.

I don't think this part is fair (I did use a "..." to omit out a part that I thought was ).

The population of the north was about 22 million and the south about 9. of course the white population in the south was only about 5, and slaves weren't used in armies. If you look at relative army sizes, they mobilized more effectively than the north.

The strategy the south had was coherent, though I know some disagree on that. They had a defensive strategy, with a few short term offensives, and tried to defend all of the states in its territory--whether that was the right strategy is obviously debatable but I don't think there was a political alternative.

The railway system totally broke down by the end of the war, and much has been written about confederate railroad management (obviously not all positive) but at the end of the day they lacked the industrial capacity to maintain a rail system, went through economic collapse during the war, and were effectively embargoed by war's end. Rail maintenance deteriorated by war's end so that trains were running at a snail's pace, and troops were getting out to walk along side the trains on uphill sections so the trains could make it.

[The Minsky Moment]

The phrase "shit just got real" is over-used I think.  Are there really large groups of people denying the reality of shit these days?  Is there some sort of gnostic revival movement focused on excrement that I've missed?