Southerners and the Civil War

[Cary]

I've been having somewhat of a dialogue with some Southern conservatives about "The Civil War". I put that in quotes because they don't believe it was a civil war. They think it was about Lincoln not wanting to forego tariffs on Southern agricultural products.

These conservatives can't answer my questions. They can only say that I've been duped by the "Victor", who wrote the story, and that I just can't understand.

BTW, I have a good, if not excellent, understanding of American History, having taken several upper level courses as an undergraduate. These courses could have counted as graduate courses.

Anyway, I'm wondering if there are any non-conservative Southern perspectives on this, or any other perspectives generally. Is this a conservative thing at all?

As I said, I can't get any straight answers.

[demsrule4life]

1. Down here never hear it called the Civil War

It was the war of northern aggression.

[Cary]

2. Understood, Dems4life. Could you elaborate.

And is there any difference in perspective between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives?

[Yupster]

6. Issue to understand

when talking to southerners who can't seem to get over the Civil War is that ...

no group of Americans ever fought harder, longer, and with greater losses than the southerners did during the Civil War. At the start of the war, there were about 1 million adult white males healthy enough to fight. Over 750,000 of them or 75 % of them fought for the Confederacy. That is an incredible percentage that America has never come close to equalling.

Of that 750,000, by the end of the war, 250,000 were dead and 250,000 were wounded. The south fought until there was no one left to fight with. More often than not, there was little food, and less equipment.

Anyway, they fought with terrible hardships because they thought they were right.

They felt they had every Constitutional right to secede, and even though they were right, a bigger stronger foe subjugated them, burned their homes, dug up and stole their china, tore up their railroads, destroyed their crops and killed their livestock.

Then there's Reconstruction.

Anyway, when a person or group feels so wronged, it is not easy to get over it.

Maybe a Marshall Plan kind of program would have helped? Maybe bringing some ex-leaders right away into the government?

It's similar to the family members of famous criminals still trying to prove their kin innocent 100 years later.

It's interesting that recently there are posts about California or other parts of the US seceeding.

[wildmanj]

7. war

a rich man's war---a poor man's fight---the south forgot that wars are fought with guns and not a rebel yell

[Yupster]

8. True, but

at the time America had never had a ruinous war which killed hundreds of thousands.

The wars the southerners looked at were the Mexican War, the Texas Revolution, the War of 1812, where there were a few battles, a few hundred were killed and the war was over.

That's what they expected. Show the Yankees we're serious, win one or two battles, and that will be the end of it.

I think from looking at their time period, it was a reasonable expectation.

[dae]

15. You're exactly right, they thought a few skirmishes and it would all

be over.
Then the war became long, bloody, and almost entirely fought on southern soil. To top it off came Reconstruction which would not have occured had President Lincoln lived, but instead was a plague of itself for up to 12 years in some states.
The South had to lose the war, and I'm glad it did. However, Southerners I know, including myself, are more concerned others would think Reconstruction was deserving to a populace who had already suffered thru four bitter years of warfare, and that is one of those items that stick in the craw.

[Yupster]

3. I like the

"War for Southern Independance."

Seems least judgemental and most accurate description to me.

[DenverDem]

4. Willful ignorance knows no bounds.

As a Native Texan who grew up in rural East Texas I have seen the depths of Southern peckerwood moranics. These are the foot soldiers for the rethuglicans because they are not able to concieve of a reality outside of the bounds of the ideological constrictions dictated by their demagogic overlords.

There are plenty of conservative morans in every state of the union, however.

[WoodrowFan]

5. the Tariff??

the next time some neo-confederate says the Civil War was about anything but slavery you can throw the CSA's own words back at them...

Mississippi

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/missec.htm
It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.
It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.
It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.
It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.
It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.
It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.
It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.
It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

South Carolina
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/scarsec.htm
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

Georgia
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/geosec.htm
Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of this power to that end. This insulting and unconstitutional demand was met with great moderation and firmness by the South. We had shed our blood and paid our money for its acquisition; we demanded a division of it on the line of the Missouri restriction or an equal participation in the whole of it. These propositions were refused, the agitation became general, and the public danger was great. The case of the South was impregnable.

The Presidential election of 1852 resulted in the total overthrow of the advocates of restriction and their party friends. Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery an to stake their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere. This is the party two whom the people of the North have committed the Government. They raised their standard in 1856 and were barely defeated. They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded.
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees it its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.
With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers.
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.

Texas
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/texsec.htm
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.


the following are from.. http://www.americancivilwar.info/pages/ordinances_secession.asp


Alabama

Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama, preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and menacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security, therefore:

And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as permanent Government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States,


Virginia

The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States:


The other Southern states, including Florida, North Carolina and Arkansas pretty much said “we’re outta here” and mentioned the election of Lincoln.


Section 9.4 of the CSA Constitution…

(4) No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

From the “Cornerstone Speech” delivered by CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, March 21, 1861.

http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/corner.html
But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other -- though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.{emphasis added} Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."


and last but not least, a good Civil War quiz… http://bellsouthpwp.net/m/e/mebuckner/civwarquiz.htm

[H2O Man]

9. Great!

Always good to add a dose of reality to a discussion that is being distorted. There were many issues, but slavery was the #1 issue.... for both sides.

[ret5hd]

10. when someone can't answer questions and says "you just can't ...

understand,

it's probably a pretty good sign that they are relying on dogma and faith, and they don't truly understand the subject themselves. If they had a true understanding of what they were saying, they would be able to express the ideas, even if you disagreed with their conclusions.

[carolinayellowdog]

11. Here's a decidedly non-conservative Southern POV

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2YLGE752ZD&isbn=0195130278&itm=2

Freehling argues that the Confederacy was doomed because support for it was so weak among Southerners.

[amber dog democrat]

12. My maternal grandparents

had relatives that fought in the Confederacy in GA and MS. We had that print of Lee and his generals in my great grandmother's house. 3 generations in Texas later and all I heard it refered to was the Civil War.

However I did once talk to an older woman in her eighties in Charleston North Carolina who did correct me saying " Young man, it was the War Between the States. It was by no means Civil".

[MonicaR]

13. I Have Another Name For the Civil War

The War to Preserve Slavery. That's basically the way I see it from my perspective as an African-American.

I say it anytime I want to piss off a right wing Southerner and get them away from their Faux News programmed responses in an argument.

[Logansquare]

19. That's correct, MonicaR

Confederate romancing and revisionism.

[fabius]

14. Some other issues involved, but slavery the big issue.

A careful reader of Civil War and pre-war history must come to the conclusion that yes it was really about slavery at its root.

A number of other national and cultural issues came to their head in and around the same time, some of which were cited by both sides as part of the justification either for secession or for enforcement of federal mandate by force.

(1) Slavery was the only issue that was apparently unresolvable by political means.

(2) Preserving the Union. But the split happened only over the issue of slavery. The South wouldn't have seceded over tariffs.

(3) Declining Southern planter aristocracy versus growing Northern industrial aristocracy. These naturally competitive and antagonistic elements had a number of interests that were in conflict. Tariffs, banking and corporation laws.

(4) The "Jeffersonian" agrarian democratic ideal versus the urban masses. These groups didn't necessarily have antagonistic interests, but had differences in culture and innate mistrust, particularly with the influx of large numbers of immigrants.

(5) "States Rights" versus growing Federal power. Jackson and his successors presided over significant growth in the exercise of power of the US government over the state governments and over commerce. For Jackson and Van Buren, this was undertaken to constrain the power of the growing capitalist class. The "Jeffersonian" democratic tradition didn't adapt its philosophy quickly enough to the increase in government power necessary to restrain industrial capitalism. In fact it didn't really adapt until the New Deal.

The early progressive Democrats had a natural alliance with the South against the Northern capitalist class. The exercise of greater federal power strained this relationship; the question of slavery broke it. Many liberal Democrats left the party to join the new Republican party in 1856 and 1860. The religiously principled Whigs (conservatives) like A. Lincoln also joined the Republican banner. The "corporate" Whigs had by this time joined the southern aristocracy in an unnatural temporary alliance under the "conservative" Democrat umbrella to confront the greater threat of "liberty and justice for all".

After the war, the Northern commercial interests took the Republican Party by storm and wrapped themselves in the banners of freedom and liberty which they had done so much to oppose before the war.

The Southern people were at least honest about their feelings, they mostly stayed Democratic until the 1960's, because they hated the name "Republican".

The party names may not change but the coalitions within them are ever shifting.

[Cary]

16. Some nice posts here and I'd like to keep up this discussion.

Not a lot of time at the moment, though.

There was an issue about slavery diminishing the value of wages. The backward, Southern, agrarian culture versus the newly industrializing Northern culture.

Whether or not the slave culture was doomed is speculative. It's a sad comment, but perhaps the Civil War was the only way to achieve the concensus on the issues you list, Fabius.

Since these people have not, and apparently can not, get over this after almost 140 years, what does it mean for our kind, here at DU? Are we hopelessly estranged from these people? Perhaps we want to be hopelessly estranged from them? But of course we have those red states that we have to overcome.

Funny how the Civil War still casts an ominous shadow.

[MonicaR]

17. And so does slavery

We are still dealing with the fallout from slavery 100 plus years later

[fabius]

18. "Unreconstructed Confederates"

There is a good book called "Confederates in the Attic" by Tony Horwitz, that examines some of the cultural residue (as opposed to the racist residue) of the Civil War in the South.

Everybody has an interest in their own heritage, and descendants of Confederates as much or more so. My wife has Confederate soldiers as ancestors and it's interesting to research them.

Every state including "liberal" Oregon has its share of boneheads, bigots and racists(you'll recall our skinhead troubles).

Sometimes I run into a person who just seems totally alien, but regardless of political views most people pretty much want the same things out of life. Regular people, I mean.

The ones that are the problem are the power-hungry, greedy, and totally ignorant (or oxyrush-brainwashed), which really doesn't describe most people. Even most Republicans.