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You mean the person who actual historians widely discredit? A person who didn't finish his college education but is somehow viewed as the absolute authority on the Civil War? The same guy who was enamored with Nathan Bedford Forrest?
You're going to need a source for this one...
Its widely accepted that Lee himself and his family owned slaves.
From the same obituary in The Guardian:
Quote:
... in 1985, when Foote was approaching the age of 70, he was asked to serve as a consultant on Ken Burns's television history of the civil war for the US Public Broadcasting System (PBS). His 89 appearances in the 11-hour documentary transformed him into a national celebrity.
When you ask a question and then argue with the answer it's quite obvious that you had your mind made up as to what the answer should be before the answer was given. No matter how many reasons other than for slavery are given, only "for slavery" will be accepted. It begs the question "why did you ask the question in the first place"? It's obvious that the op and their supporters want an argument and to claim the moral high ground and not a simple answer.
When you ask a question and then argue with the answer it's quite obvious that you had your mind made up as to what the answer should be before the answer was given. No matter how many reasons other than for slavery are given, only "for slavery" will be accepted. It begs the question "why did you ask the question in the first place"? It's obvious that the op and their supporters want an argument and to claim the moral high ground and not a simple answer.
Well said. They started out with an opinion and wanted to bait people into arguing about it. Nothing more. I doubt they even took the time to consider any other position. Brilliant. I thought I'd play along to see if anyone, esp OP, had an open mind........
You mean the person who actual historians widely discredit? .
I wasn't aware of Foote's trilogy being "widely discredited" by anyone. The critics have focused on what they perceive as an exceptional affection for the Confederate participants, if not for their cause, and that is certainly present in the books. You can tell he gets a kick out of relating the stories of colorful characters such as Earl Van Dorn or Nathan Forrest, and I do not blame him for that, they were very colorful characters irrespective of whatever moral evaluation one wishes to make of their lives.
So....who do you have in mind with "widely discredited?"
We know he inherited 10 or 12 and there is no record of them being freed. His son later claimed they'd been freed "without legal action", which is of course a convenient explanation for the lack of paper trail. And also worthless. A black man in Virginia without papers, claiming to be free?
We also know that as executor of his father-in-law's estate (Arlington), he kept hundreds of slaves in bondage for years and engaged in a practice that was considered harsh even for that time: That of renting out the strong workers (that is, the men) as workforce, sometimes sending them hundreds of miles away. This obviously broke up families and stripped the slaves of even more of their dignity. He even petitioned the courts for permission to send them out of state and was denied.
You can split hairs about whether he owned those slaves, but he certainly ruled over them, and did so in a manner that was considered inhumane - even by the standards of other slaveowners.
So - no pass for Lee. A brutal man whose main accomplishment in life was to lose a fight for a brutal institution.
I wasn't aware of Foote's trilogy being "widely discredited" by anyone. The critics have focused on what they perceive as an exceptional affection for the Confederate participants, if not for their cause, and that is certainly present in the books. You can tell he gets a kick out of relating the stories of colorful characters such as Earl Van Dorn or Nathan Forrest, and I do not blame him for that, they were very colorful characters irrespective of whatever moral evaluation one wishes to make of their lives.
So....who do you have in mind with "widely discredited?"
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've read that approximately 30% of southern families owned slaves, pre Civil War.
So that would be a reason for Southerners fighting.
Another reason, psychologically, the poor Whites were a rung up in the social hierarchy from slaves.
If slaves were freed, then the Blacks would be on the same social level in comparison to poor Whites.
This may sound far fetched to our 21st century mind, but I think it might have been a big motivator for
Confederacy recruiting. We see modern poor people who are in favor of policies that are against their own best interests ( right to work, Medicare for all, ....), so it's not a leap to assume that in 1860, poor Whites could be motivated to fight to maintain the institution of slavery.
Good points.
I know that the OP is looking for reasons other than slavery, but I'd submit that slavery and general notions of white racial superiority that would even have the lowest (socially speaking) white families believing they were superior to anyone black and give reason to fight to preserve such a status quo. Or at least provide motivation through hatred to engage in fighting.
When we discuss slave holding in the Confederacy, it is crucial to talk about slave holding families as opposed to individual slave owners to get a true sense of the impact of slavery and those who relied on/benefited from slavery and who, thus, would have a reason to fight to keep the institution going.
Indeed, let's take an example of a hypothetical standard plantation in the Confederacy pre-Civil War. 10 African slaves work in the field. A handful of slave work in the house and other odd jobs. The slaves prepare the meals, clean the house, wash the clothes, run errands, etc., for the master, his wife, his children, the odd relative living on the property, overseers, etc. The wife/children/relatives/overseers can all honestly throw their hands up in the air and claim "I don't own any slaves." And the master's 20 year old son who works however many slaves on the plantation can say that he is fighting for Dixie and doesn't own any slaves. That's where things are misleading, as slavery benefited way more than just the slave owner directly.
While even most families didn't own slaves in the South, the percentage of slave owning families is FAR greater than the percentage of slave owners in the South. In South Carolina--on the high end--it was 46% in 1860, while it was 20% in Arkansas on the low end in 1860 (among the confederate states): 1860 Census Results It is not difficult to see how the majority of the white population throughout the confederacy benefited from slavery even if not everyone "owned" slaves directly.
I don't doubt that there were many who also fought for the Confederacy to ward off what they saw as invaders into their homeland. And, indeed, pre-Civil War, people certainly identified with their states more than they did as belonging to the US. From watching Ken Burns' The Civil War, I've learned that it was more common pre-Civil War to hear "the United States of America are" vs. "the United States of America is." But I also would caution people from using the slave owner argument to support the notion (the false notion, I argue) that fewer people than actually did fought for the Confederacy because a small percentage benefited directly from slavery.
I know that the OP is looking for reasons other than slavery, but I'd submit that slavery and general notions of white racial superiority that would even have the lowest (socially speaking) white families believing they were superior to anyone black and give reason to fight to preserve such a status quo. Or at least provide motivation through hatred to engage in fighting.
When we discuss slave holding in the Confederacy, it is crucial to talk about slave holding families as opposed to individual slave owners to get a true sense of the impact of slavery and those who relied on/benefited from slavery and who, thus, would have a reason to fight to keep the institution going.
Indeed, let's take an example of a hypothetical standard plantation in the Confederacy pre-Civil War. 10 African slaves work in the field. A handful of slave work in the house and other odd jobs. The slaves prepare the meals, clean the house, wash the clothes, run errands, etc., for the master, his wife, his children, the odd relative living on the property, overseers, etc. The wife/children/relatives/overseers can all honestly throw their hands up in the air and claim "I don't own any slaves." And the master's 20 year old son who works however many slaves on the plantation can say that he is fighting for Dixie and doesn't own any slaves. That's where things are misleading, as slavery benefited way more than just the slave owner directly.
While even most families didn't own slaves in the South, the percentage of slave owning families is FAR greater than the percentage of slave owners in the South. In South Carolina--on the high end--it was 46% in 1860, while it was 20% in Arkansas on the low end in 1860 (among the confederate states): 1860 Census ResultsIt is not difficult to see how the majority of the white population throughout the confederacy benefited from slavery even if not everyone "owned" slaves directly.
I don't doubt that there were many who also fought for the Confederacy to ward off what they saw as invaders into their homeland. And, indeed, pre-Civil War, people certainly identified with their states more than they did as belonging to the US. From watching Ken Burns' The Civil War, I've learned that it was more common pre-Civil War to hear "the United States of America are" vs. "the United States of America is." But I also would caution people from using the slave owner argument to support the notion (the false notion, I argue) that fewer people than actually did fought for the Confederacy because a small percentage benefited directly from slavery.
If we carry this argument out to its logical conclusion, then we might be able to say that everyone in the North who wore cotton clothing was a beneficiary of slavery.
If we carry this argument out to its logical conclusion, then we might be able to say that everyone in the North who wore cotton clothing was a beneficiary of slavery.
I disagree. My argument goes toward those who directly benefited from slavery (and, thus, those who I'd argue would have more of a stake in fighting to secure the institution for future generations), as opposed to those who indirectly or incidentally benefited from slavery. Slaves cooking your meals, washing your clothes, planting your crops, providing for your salary and livelihood (particularly in the case of overseers and their families and slave owners and their families) is directly benefiting from slavery. Someone buying a shirt that was produced by a company employing free labor from cotton that was picked by enslaved Africans is much more removed from the institution of slavery than my examples. The abolition of slavery, thus, would more devastatingly impact the livelihoods and way of life for the people in my examples than the way of life for those further removed from the institution.
I actually think this is being over-thought a bit. After thinking on it for a while, I think the primary reason is simple....the southern man was fighting for a sense of what we now call 'Nationalism'.... probably better referred to back then as 'Regionalism'.
You can still see it today with people from the south when they meet at a party way across the country..as soon as you learn or sense that they are southerners, there is a certain comraderie that I've experienced many times, a certain pride of being a 'Son of the South'
Just my .02, but probably correct.
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