The Confederate Flag - how do you feel about it? (lobby, Seattle)

[Dd714]

Originally Posted by ParkTwain

I would love to see your source for stating "bound for eventual extinction." And why do you state that the South didn't pick the time to fight. They proudly fired the first shot.

I tend to agree with that comment that slavery was bound for extinction. Slave trade was outlawed by international agreement including the U.S. (that is, no more slaves were captured in Africa). The European powers outlawed slavery (so their was the diplomatic pressure), and the cotton gin and other technology was making slavery obsolete and not as cost effecttive.

Also look at Brazil - slavery ran it's course naturally and that institution died out and was outlawed in the 1880's I think. Manumission. I think the same would have happened in the U.S., probably around the same time.

[ParkTwain]

Originally Posted by Dd7I4

I tend to agree with that comment that slavery was bound for extinction. ... and the cotton gin and other technology was making slavery obsolete and not as cost effecttive.

I have read that the application of slavery on Southern cotton plantations had been waning just up to the time the cotton gin's invention. Employment of the new device meant that the seed-picking step was no longer on the "critical path" to processing the fibers, and thereafter the keys to ramping up production were increasing acreage and available manpower.

[Dd714]

Originally Posted by ParkTwain

I have read that the application of slavery on Southern cotton plantations had been waning just up to the time the cotton gin's invention. Employment of the new device meant that the seed-picking step was no longer on the "critical path" to processing the fibers, and thereafter the keys to ramping up production were increasing acreage and available manpower.

Yeah that's true. Cotton Gin was a bad example. Probably increased slavery needs.

[TexasReb]

Originally Posted by ParkTwain

I would love to see your source for stating "bound for eventual extinction," when pro-slavery politicians were aiming for establishment well north of Texas.

The words I used are my own, but paraphrased from many different sources. You can easily research and see for yourself what the prevailing sentiment was at the time. The first abolishionist society in the United States was started in the South (Virginia). Sure, certain pro-slavery concerns in the South wanted to establish it north of Texas (where it existed anyway in the Indian Territory ala' present day Oklahoma) and west into New Mexico. But as I mentioned earlier, it would have never really come to fruition and such a thing was never official policy of the CSA government. It was a fools errand, and Jefferson Davis pointed this out in his memoirs. For instance, the Arizona Territory (now New Mexico and Arizona) legalized slavery...yet there were a total of about a dozen in the area. It just didn't work. The climate wasn't condusive for plantation type slavery. Again, that had reached its geographical limits somewhere around the 100th parallel (about where the Texas panhandle begins).

And toward the end, emancipation was being seriously considered (in fact, almost done) in exchange for blacks to be enlisted in the Southern cause. Which many were willing to do. (the role of blacks serving willingly in Confederate service is an oft ignored subject).

Originally Posted by ParkTwain

And why do you state that the South didn't pick the time to fight? They proudly fired the first shot, though, as I posted previously, I don't see that specific fact as all that significant as it was Lincoln's own preference (to be fired upon first) as a PR tactic. And when the South took a "defensive posture" regarding slavery, well is it surprising that this was not seen by others to be productive? But that again is all very vague and fact-free talk.

I state it because it is fact. It is a BIASED fact, certainly, but a fact based on my own historical perspective. The South fired the first shot because there were armed troops of a foriegn nation in their territorial waters. The forces of the United States (i.e. the northern states who kept the name by default) were given every chance to honorably and peaceably withdraw, and promised safe transport back to the North. Meanwhile, Southern commisioners (Virginia Peace Commission) were trying to negotiate the issue with the Lincoln administration as to compensation for the fort, etc. But they were deliberately ignored.

Originally Posted by ParkTwain

Most of what I was trying to get across in my previous posts is that both sides, North and South, were saying one thing and actually doing another. Lincoln stated that his fundamental goal was to preserve the Union, when the outcome of the war would certainly be for the North to economically dominate the South. The Southerners purported to be acting on a principle of self-determination yet their own society showed a shocking lack of morality and "high calling" in its treatment of black slaves.

You are right in your initial summation. Where we radically part company is over your seeming determination to present the South and Southerners as the horrid netherworld of Uncle Toms Cabin. You yourself speak of a shocking lack of morality, yet you are very selective in its application. Once again, I ask, WHAT are you comparing it to?

[TexasReb]

Originally Posted by Dd7I4

Yeah that's true. Cotton Gin was a bad example. Probably increased slavery needs.

For a time, yes, that is probably true. However, as technology advanced further, so would the need for slave labor decline. For the same reason it did in the North.

Sure, it is only opinion, but the idea that slavery would have lasted much longer, at most til the start of the 20th Century, even in the deepest cotton belt of the Old South (South Carolina thru East Texas), is a bit much to believe.

As has been said, Southerners were not imune to the moral aspect of the question. And if left alone, would certainly have reacted to the same factors which caused its abolition in other parts of the Western world.

[Manigault]

Originally Posted by TexasReb

As has been said, Southerners were not imune to the moral aspect of the question. And if left alone, would certainly have reacted to the same factors which caused its abolition in other parts of the Western world.

But if they had won a war with slavery as one of the issues, I don't know if slavery would have ever been abolished. Look at our constitution with the ban against forced harboring of troops. How often does that issue come up?

Most historians believe that, for the good of the country, it is a positive thjing that the southern rebellion was not successful. Or, as I term it, the War of the Southern Aristocracy.

[TexasReb]

For anyone interested in the Southern side of the War Between the States, here is a great link:

A Southern View of History:* The War for Southern Independence-Table of Contents

[TexasReb]

Originally Posted by Manigault

But if they had won a war with slavery as one of the issues, I don't know if slavery would have ever been abolished. Look at our constitution with the ban against forced harboring of troops. How often does that issue come up?

Most historians believe that, for the good of the country, it is a positive thjing that the southern rebellion was not successful. Or, as I term it, the War of the Southern Aristocracy.

Slavery was really THE issue with only a few extremists on both sides...the radical abolishionists in New England (many of whom came from families whose wealth was built on the slave trade), and of course, naturally, the very upper echelons of the Planter class in the South.

The vast majority, north or South, couldn't have cared less one way or another....at least not as a moral question.

There is just simply, to me, no way, slavery would have continued in the South much longer even if the Confederacy had won. It would have met the eventual end it did in the North, and for similar reasons.

[Don D.]

OK ladies and gentleman and those of you who are neither, let's review. 720 posts. Lots of quality comments from all six sides. Well there are at least four sides to the discussion. And lots of trashy commentary as well as various and sundry items tossed or slung down from the peanut gallery. But, I think for the most part, those that really stick to the mind and provoke thought are the respectful ones and those that seem to be of genuine intent for open and honest discussion. Maybe the thread will become a hallmark of civility for this entire website.

I declare it's intermission. Intermission signals the halfway point in the play or the movie (and promises a few commercials and at least another 700 posts). So, while everyone gets popcorn or a box of those expensive Dum Dums in the glass counter out front, I wanted to list just a few items from the book Strange And Fascinating Facts - The Civil War - Burke Davis.

Two million federal soldiers were 21 or under out of a total of two million seven hundred thousand. More than a million were 18 and under, 200k 16 and under, 100k 15 and under. 300 were 13 or under and an astonishing 300 were under 10 years of age.

A study of Confederate figures shows that of a sample of 11 thousand, 8 thousand of them were between 21 and 29, one boy was 13 and three were 14 years old and 400 were in their forties with 86 in their 50s. One man was 70 and another 73.

(Remember, it's intermission, this is not argument or debate....it's trivia.)

The various names for this war are:
War for Constitutional Liberty
War for Southern Independence
Second American Revolution
War For States Rights
Mr. Lincoln's War
The Southern Rebellion
War for Southern Rights
War of The Southern Planters
War of the Rebellion
Second War for Independence
War to Suppress Yankee Arrogance
The Brothers' War
War of Seccession
The Great Rebellion
War for Nationality
War for Southern Nationality
War Against Slavery
Civil War Between The States
War of the Sixties
War Against Northern Aggression
The Yankee Invasion
War for Separation
War for Abolition
War For The Union
The Confederate War
War of The Southrons
War for Southern Freedom
War of the Northa nd South
The Lost Cause

Firing on both sides was so inaccurate that soldiers estimated it took a man's weight in lead to kill a single enemy in battle. A federal expert said that each Confederate who was shot required 240 pounds of powder and 900 pounds of lead.

Of the future members of the US Supreme Court who were of fighting age during the war, seven were in uniform. Four fought for the union; Oliver Wendell Holmes, John M. Harlan, William B. Woods and Stanley Matthews. Three fought for the Confederacy; Edward D. White, Horace H. Lurton, and Lucius Q.C. Lamar.

Two of the wars most famous and bloody battles may be said to have fought because of trifles. Gettysburg, because a few soldiers needed shoes and their column was sent to that Pennsylvania village for them. Sharpsburg, or Antietam, because a Confederate officer wrapped three cigars with a vital army order, and carelessly dropped or discarded them. This order, found by a Federal soldier, enabled the usually cautious General McClellan to attack Lee's divided army.

The 8th Wisconsin had one of the most remarkable mascots in the union armies: Old Abe, a lively eagle.

A Confederate officer, Captain S. Isadore Fuillet, was fatally shot on the same horse on which three of his brothers had been previously killed. He willed the animal to a nephew as he died.

Claude Pardigon, a Frenchman en route to join the Southern cause, challenged the skipper of a blockade-runner to a duel because he did not provide toothbrushes for passengers.

(you're now half-way through the intermission post)

Slaves in Virginia could be hired for $30 a month in 1863, yet the pay of an army private was $11 per month. Confederate pay rose to $18 per month the next year. Union privates drew only $16, but the gold value of their pay was more than seven times greater than that of Confederates.

The Confederate general, Nathan B. Forrest, classed by historians as the war's most able cavalry commander, had twenty-nine horses shot from under him in the course of the war.

There was an Abraham Lincoln on each side in the war. The President, and a Confederate private Abraham Lincoln of Company F, 1st Virginia, from Jefferson County. He was reported as a deserter in 1864, so that the north ended up with both.

Mr. Lincoln was suffering from smallpox when he delivered the most famous speech in American history, The Gettysburg Address. It was not diagnosed until he had made his brief appearance and rode back to Washington from Gettysburg. It was a mild case, as it happened, but the President felt ill on the train journey, and lay with a wet cloth across his brow, seeking relief. The address accumulated legends from the start, many of them false, like the tale that lincoln wrote his speech on an envelope as he jostled along the rails to Gettysburg.

The Union Army Medical Department reported in 1861 that 1 out of 12 soldiers had venereal disease, an incredible rate. Of 63,000 negro Union troops, over 14,000 were diseased. One Confederate artillery battery once reported 13 of its 45 men hospitalized with venereal disease. Both armies were followed by large parties of women, both reported several cases of women who disquised themselves as men, dispensing their favors widely before being detected and banished.

On June 20, 1864, the union army hanged a convicted negro rapist of a white woman within plain view of Confederate lines before Petersburg. The aim wa propagandistic, since Provost Marshal General Marsena Patrick hoped to convince the enemy that such criminals would be brought to justice.

The town of Winchester, Virginia, changed hands seventy-six times during the war, as the armies surged to and fro in the Northern Shenandoah Valley.

U.S. Grant was a slave owner who had voted the democratic ticket and married into a pro-Southern family. In 1858 Grant bought Williams Jones, a thirty five year old mulatto but gave him freedom a year later. Grant then married Julia Dent of St. Louis, who owned at least three slaves.

Grant was an anti-semite. General Order Number 11 which went out over Grant's name said: "The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from rhe receipt of this order. Post commanders will see that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners."

The Bonnie Blue Flag is claimed to have been the first banner of Secession, and flew in Montgomery, Alabama, while the first Confederate Congress was in session. This flag had been used in the fight for the independence of Texas. The Bonnie Blue flew from the Capitol building in Jackson, Mississippi the day after the state's secession and 'The Bonnie Blue Flag' was written in that city by Harry MacCarthy. This flag had (has) a white star centered in a rectangular field of dark blue.

And finally.........

The fate of Columbia, South Carolina, has been in controversy from the day Sherman's troops marched through, and flames swept the city. An example of the furor which has rage since is the title of a book by an eyewitness, Dr. D.H. Trezevant, of Columbia: 'The Burning of Columbia, S.C.: A Review of Northern Assertions and Southern Fact."

Of Sherman, Trezevant wrote: "The utter devastation of the whole country side makes hiim one of the most ruthless invaders that ever cursed the earth by his presence. Attila or Alaric shrink into insignificance when compared with (Sherman)."

OK..........please continue.

[TexasReb]

Originally Posted by Don D.

I declare it's intermission. Intermission signals the halfway point in the play or the movie (and promises a few commercials and at least another 700 posts). So, while everyone gets popcorn or a box of those expensive Dum Dums in the glass counter out front,

Ahhh, intermission! The days of buttercorn and cokes (for non-Southerners, that can mean 7-Up and Pepsi, too). Thanks for the relief and entertainment, brother Don.

I think I will take advantage of the fact by going out and mowing my grass. Hey, but for those of us old enough to remember it, I just GOTTA (and I was only 6 years old when the song came out) ask if, when talking of intermission and balconies, if anyone remembers the song by the "Drifters" titled "Saturday Night at the Movies."?

"Saturday Night at the movies,
Who cares what picture you see?
When you're huggin' with your baby
In the last row of the balcony...!


Later, y'all!