Confederates = American? (90s, state, Spanish, Ireland)

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by ladyofnorth

I wish the schools would teach the correct history of the Civil War. It was about the federal Government wanting to have the whole country under its control.Nothing to do with the North or South people. Or slavery. Slaves came in Native Americans and whites too. The Spanish brought the slaves here in the 1500`s way before the English. And the Rich had the slaves not the poor. It was agreed that if the slaves fought on the North side that they would be FREE.

The Federal government is a thing, not a person, thus it never has nor never will "want" anything.

The Federal government in 1860 was composed of the represenatives from all the States, not just the Northern ones.

[Dd714]

Originally Posted by ladyofnorth

I wish the schools would teach the correct history of the Civil War. It was about the federal Government wanting to have the whole country under its control.Nothing to do with the North or South people. Or slavery. Slaves came in Native Americans and whites too. The Spanish brought the slaves here in the 1500`s way before the English. And the Rich had the slaves not the poor. It was agreed that if the slaves fought on the North side that they would be FREE.

The reasons for the Civil War are complex, but the institution of slavery (not slavery itself, not the oppresion of the black man, but the societal and political and economic divisions that the institution caused) were the reasons. I don't want to change topics here, as it has been gone over tons of times here.

On other note: Blacks that faught for the north, for the most case, were already free. Freedmen living in the north where slavery was already abolished. Although certaintly fugitive or freed slaves from the liberated states also formed up divisions and faught for the north. But of course, maybe the point you were trying to make, the war for them was about making their fellow blacks in the southern states free.

[JimmyJohnWilson]

Originally Posted by kygman

It seems to me that, at the time of the Civil War the south was the Confederate States of America. In that case, had they won, wouldn't they be known as Confederates?
Also, earlier posts mentioned Kentucky. The state may not have joined the Confederacy, but that doesn't mean the southern part of the state didn't want to. In Graves County, in the far western part of the state, in the election that put Abraham Lincoln in the White House, he received 0 votes.

abraham lincoln did not win a single county in the state of kentucky and received 0.9 percent of the vote in the state.

if this map doesnt show how polarized north v. south was in 1860 nothing will.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8d/1860prescountymap.PNG (broken link)

as far as what they would call themselves had they separated? ireland is two counties, but i believe both countries refer to themselves as irish. i imagine citizens of the CSA would call themselves americans as well.

[mensaguy]

If the CSA had prevailed, their history would probably have referred to "The War of Northern Aggression." I think inhabitants of the South would have been knows as Confederates.

It's often a matter of perspective. Some British have referred to events that took place during the Reign of George III as "That Nasty Affair With The Colonies." (Citizens of the USA call it The American Revolution.)

[Dd714]

Originally Posted by mensaguy

It's often a matter of perspective. Some British have referred to events that took place during the Reign of George III as "That Nasty Affair With The Colonies." (Citizens of the USA call it The American Revolution.)

Yeah the british have a way of phrasing times of strife with unassuming nomenclature - i.e "The Troubles" - to describe the 3 decades of violence with Ireland.

[Frankie117]

Originally Posted by JimmyJohnWilson

abraham lincoln did not win a single county in the state of kentucky and received 0.9 percent of the vote in the state.

if this map doesnt show how polarized north v. south was in 1860 nothing will.


as far as what they would call themselves had they separated? ireland is two counties, but i believe both countries refer to themselves as irish. i imagine citizens of the CSA would call themselves americans as well.

Lincoln was not even on the ballad in most Southern states. Although I imagine that even if he was very few counties would have voted for him.

Anyway I doubt Southerners would have referred to themselves as "Americans", that would be too easy to mix up, especially abroad. Maybe just a simple term like "Confederates". Although I do agree that given the rather loose nature of the Southern union, citizens may have just referred to themselves by whatever state they were from.

To answer the other question about Southerners generally referred to as a patriotic bunch, that just comes with the culture to be proud of where you are from. I suspect the same reason to explain why military recruiters have no problem meeting and far exceeding their quotas in the Southern region.

[majoun]

Originally Posted by Grandstander

Don't worry about that one, the Southern accent is in the process of being replaced by Ebonics and Spanglish.

Ebonics is part of the Southern American English group of dialects. It's just the only one that's managed to survive outside the South itself for decades, while the others seemed to disappear in one generation. The old Texas-like accent of rural Southern California survived longer than most Southern-type accents outside the south because of the Okies. However, it's dead, while Ebonics still survives.

I've noticed some younger Texans, especially in Dallas and vicinity, seem to talk in a General American type accent rather than the tones of the Lone Star State.

[texdav]

There are as mnay dialects i the south as mnay countries.There are even dialects within states like california and in cities like ew york.

[hobbesdj]

Originally Posted by majoun

Ebonics is part of the Southern American English group of dialects. It's just the only one that's managed to survive outside the South itself for decades, while the others seemed to disappear in one generation.

That's what I always thought, too.

Anyways, that map above is really striking. I really had no idea that the polarization was that pronounced.

[AuburnAL]

Originally Posted by hobbesdj

1. If the Confederates had secured independence, what would their nationality be called? USA = Americans (please no debate by our Latin American friends and others on how Argentinians and Peruvians are American too, I am referring to nationality), The United States of Mexico = Mexicans , the United States of Brazil = Brazilians, etc. Would the people of the USA be called Confederates? Southern Americans?

The CSA was just a stop gap because folks had to think of something to call it since it would have taken too long to list all the states. After the war the name would have been changed to New Switzerland.

In all seriousness though American or the noun used to represent belonging to their state. A person from Mobile could no more be a Confederate than a person from Marseilles is a Republican. Although people were Soviets (which itself even in the singular actually refers to a group of people) so who knows. Southerner would be out since it would define them only in relation to the US. If that were acceptable Canadians might as well call themselves Northerners.

2. The "Civil War" was a war for independence, right? Why has it been termed a "civil war" after the fact? This sounds akin to calling the American Revolution a civil war or the Dutch War of Independence against Spain a "Civil War". A Civil War is a war fought for control of a country, not secession. Is this an effort by us to forget that the CSA was forging another nation and bring together the country? Whats the deal?

I guess its the perogative of historians to ignore the basic facts on the ground to give a war the name they want. I doubt recruiters during WWII were saying, "You heard about the original now be part of the sequel in World War 2: The Legend of World War 1."

3. Why do the former Confederate states seem to be the biggest "flag-wavers"? And by this I refer to the American aka USA flag. On the US ethnicity map, it is mostly in the former CSA where people refer to their ancestry only as "American". Why is this?

This question encompasses more answers than one might suspect. Part one. The South contributes a high number of soldiers to the US military for a number of reasons. One, we're more violent than elsewhere per murder and suicide rates. Two, the importance of the duty of military service continues to be a real thing to a lot of Southerners. Three, since one and two led to folks joining the military in the past its a family tradition. Part two. One, you're probably not given the choice to say Texan or Southerner so American is the closest correct answer. Two, unlike northern cities where ethnic enclaves formed and persisted the more rural south did not have neighborhoods of people reinforcing an allegiance to the old country. Three, a lot of families in the South have been here a long time, and due to two there's not so much of a reason to remember where our ancestors came from. Four, the black white dichotomy has historically been much more important in the South than whether a person was Irish, Italian, German, or what have you. In fact when you find ethnic or formerly ethnic areas of the south such as Germantown, Tennessee it refers to a group of people who moved here after WWII (actually though Germantown has its name because there was a POW camp there in WWII although apparently since a lot of the POWs liked what they saw of the community when they were sent out to work in it a number of them did immigrate their after the war).

4. Why isn't the Confederate flag widely viewed as anti-american? Didn't CSA soldiers fight directly against men of the United States, flying the American flag and who had Abraham Lincoln, 15th president of the US as their leader? Was their cause not as "anti-American" as any other nation the US has combated? Wouldn't a loyalist in Canada who chose British rule over being part of the US be viewed as anti-American? Why not the Confederates? The Southerners who were not so keen on the idea of the CSA were mainly black Americans and white unionists who fought for the USA under the US flag etc., wouldn't it be reasonable to say they were "anti-Confederate"?

Depends on who you talk to. The CSA never had any designs on wiping the USA off the map which is something the UK can't say even though they've been one of the US's biggest allies for a long time, and when you pose the question in reverse it does change because as history shows the USA was unwilling to have the CSA exist as an independent neighbor.

5. Why do so many people abroad use the southern accent as the stereotypical American accent? When I lived in Canada, people would have the "Canadian" guy using a general American accent like anyone in Pennsylvania might have, but the "American" character would have a thick and difficult southern accent.

Actually per another thread kicking around here somewhere there are 4 general American accents that the other can be grouped into. In the early days of the US the dominant one was the Northern r-less (the Boston accent in which one pahks the cah). Then it was the Northern r-ful for most of the US's history. This is the Pennsylvania accent you reference. Now the Southern r-ful has passed that or is about to due to its prevalence in the military and the music industry. The other one is the Southern r-less as you might imagine someone from Charleston or Savannah speaking but which is pretty much extinct now.

A domestic example is Sarah Palin, who has named red states as the "real America" or something along those lines. The reddest states are the former CSA states, so how are they the "real America" when some of their ideals knowingly clashed directly with many we have such as freedom and equality,

The populace of the Northern states to be far more interested in restricting people's freedoms these days than the populace of the Southern states.

and when the south was much less a "land of opportunity" for immigrants?

If people want to live in a tenement in NYC or LA when the same rent could get them a house with land in Nashville or Birmingham it is their business.

By the logic described above, Canadians (well, English Canadians) are "Americans" too. The difference between English Canadians and the CSA is that the Canadians successfully secured their independence (well, dependence on the British Empire, really,) whereas the CSA failed to do so. So why are Canadians considered a completely different legitimate nationality unlike the people of the CSA? After living there I can honestly say the biggest difference between them and the northerners (some Canadians will really hate me for saying this) is the political system (Queen Elizabeth, parliament, etc), whereas the southerners really undeniably have their own food, undeniable accent, music, dress, etc.

And before anyone convicts me of being a damned Yankee, some of my ancestors were slave-owning plantation men, and fought for Virginia and North Carolina. We have a plaque commemorating them and the sons of the confederacy on the floor below me. I am just confused, because when I add up all the facts about the CSA, they seem to be another nation which was forced to stay part of the US. So were the people of the CSA another nation of people, different from the "Americans", or just a regional variety of American people? I would like to know whether this is the case, or not.

A language is a dialect that has an army and a navy as the man said.

English Canadians are not Americans because they are a separate country. However, given their propensity to define themselves largely in terms of how they're not Americans one can certainly come to the conclusion that they protest too much. Not intending to be mean to English Canadians. If nothing else you guys are largely responsible for curling and hockey being as well known as they are so I'm for you even if I'll probably never get to play either sport.

Now to rephrase your question to one that is easier to answer yes Southerners are different from Northerners, and they're more different from Northerners than Northerners are from English Canadians (IMO guys before the hate starts flowing). The biggest problem the South faces with its identity is that white Southerners and black Southerners largely don't realize how similar they are to each other in culture and whatnot. Until that synthesis happens the South will never develop into a real pillar of Anglosphere civilization even though as others in this thread have pointed out the South has produced a disproportionate number of the great American writers and musicians.