Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I've read that approximately 30% of southern families owned slaves, pre Civil War.
So that would be a reason for Southerners fighting.
.
This seems like a really high number. While the majority of the Southeast was farming, many farms were small, family operations. Plantations, who had slaves, where massive land wise.
Foote himself called himself a "novelist-historian" and did not include footnotes or secondary sources in his text. Do you really need me to provide sources as to why a book written in that format is not a valid historical text?
I wanted you to identify who these "actual historians" were behind "widely discrediting" Foote's trilogy. Since "actual historians" is a claim, not a source, of course you need to provide your sources.
Foote wrote the trilogy with the grace and flow of a novelist, he didn't write a novel. If you have some challenge to the facts presented, please provide the specifics of your complaint.
This seems like a really high number. While the majority of the Southeast was farming, many farms were small, family operations. Plantations, who had slaves, where massive land wise.
I didn't run the numbers to average each southern state (or each Confederate state), but such a number seems plausible to me or not too far off based on the 1860 Census: 1860 Census Results
I didn't run the numbers to average each southern state (or each Confederate state), but such a number seems plausible to me or not too far off based on the 1860 Census: 1860 Census Results
Looking at the statistics, it is of note that among the seven first states to resort to secession, all but Texas were over or close to 50% slave in population.
This seems like a really high number. While the majority of the Southeast was farming, many farms were small, family operations. Plantations, who had slaves, where massive land wise.
The majority of slaves were filed workers, but quite a few were employed in servant roles. A small farm could have a farmhand or two, a town family a maid.
Looking at the statistics, it is of note that among the seven first states to resort to secession, all but Texas were over or close to 50% slave in population.
A lot of them fought for fun. They were told the Yanks would be defeated in six months, and it was a chance to get some adventure. When the war dragged on through planting time, a lot of them went back home to work the farm. Some of them got hung for desertion, which was a pretty grim ending for something that was supposed to be fun.
Some of them got a taste for rape and murder. As long as they didn't bother white women, nobody cared. After the war ended they did the same thing to the Indians. Nobody cared. Either they settled down after a while, or somebody put them in the grave. Nobody cared.
Some of them got a taste for rape and murder. As long as they didn't bother white women, nobody cared.
So did the Union soldiers..... and they didn't care if they were white women. One of the reasons the Northerners are still abhorred by many in the South...
It's also been forgotten that before the Civil War, the United States viewed itself as a much looser confederation of individual states which, in the absence of large-scale enterprises, standards, and "internal improvements" were presumed to have greater autonomy.
Interestingly, the lack of central standards and coordination was part of why the seceding states lost.
A small but significant example: Southern railroads were a jumbled mess. A downright surprising number of track gauges and a lack of willingness among the railroads to standardize meant that moving men and material by rail became much harder than it needed to be. To make matters worse, the towns that linked several railroad lines furiously resisted connecting the rails. The cumbersome process of unloading, moving across town, and reloading kept lots of people employed, after all.
In the North, rail lines were already mostly standardized, the railroad companies were made to form an actual network and the US Army set up an effective centralized railroad operational command with its own locomotives and rolling stock.
As Bedford Forrest is claimed to have said, strategy is a matter of getting there firstest with the mostest. And the South, thanks in part to its decentralized setup, was less able of doing so than the North.
A lot of them fought for fun. They were told the Yanks would be defeated in six months, and it was a chance to get some adventure.
That's actually a valid point. Which working-class random in the 19th century, got to see more than what was a couple of days away by horsecart? The sailor and the soldier.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
