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Most indentured servants were just decent working class British, would you judge Australia , or NZ as harshly? Southern whites should keep heads held high. The author is Jewish, and I guess not a native of the south, though she is clever, but is she the best to write about old America? How many Jews were living the n the US pre civil war? Why paint the south as Inbred <<cut>>
Moderator cut: This isn't the politics forum. , IMO the great southern states.?
Leaving aside the "But the author is a Jew!" comment, let me ask - if one's opinion is rendered suspect because they're a non-native of an area about which they have that opinion, what does that say of the opinion of the South of someone with the handle England Dan?
Leaving aside the "But the author is a Jew!" comment, let me ask - if one's opinion is rendered suspect because they're a non-native of an area about which they have that opinion, what does that say of the opinion of the South of someone with the handle England Dan?
& if you apply this rule in all rigor, then the only people who were qualified to write a history of the early European colonial efforts in N. America - that eventually became the US - were the Native Peoples.
At the time, the State was principal to most US citizens. They felt allegiance to the state in which they lived. The US was an organization of individual states.
When their state seceded from the Union, they sided with their state.
The Union became the enemy of their home state. They we invaded by that enemy, and fought to defend their State.
Misguided as it may seem to many by today's standards, it was really that simple.
It most certainly was not that simple. For one thing, you can't equate the writings of political elites and thinkers, who often viewed their state as supreme, and average voters or citizens. For another, if it were that simple, we wouldn't have extensive records of massive resistance to the Confederacy from within during the Secession crisis and during the war itself. And after the war. There was no unified front in the South during this era.
Even going with "simple" motivations we have to go way beyond what you suggest. The usual motivations for going to war were present among young fighters in the South. A job. A chance for adventure. To kill Yankees. To escape trouble at home. To preserve a slave economy that benefited them. To prove themselves to a girl. Oh, and of course, the big one: because they were forced to at the point of a bayonet.
From a description of James McPherson's book What They Fought For (1994):
Quote:
... (McPherson) explains the reason Confederate and Union soldiers prevailed throughout the bloodiest war ever fought in the United States. He read over 25,000 letters and hundreds of diaries to conclude that Civil War soldiers did indeed know what they were fighting for. In a war where letters were not censured by the military these primary sources reveal the pervading beliefs Southerners held for the ideology behind their fighting. Additionally, many of the Southern soldiers read the newspapers which kept them informed about the South’s motivation to continue fighting as the deaths accrued. The Confederate soldiers were fighting for their homes, their families, and for liberty from the Northern states and patriotic beliefs. The government of the North was seen by Southerners to be tyrannical. Thus, the Southern states, especially North Carolina, formed numerous regiments to fight in the war. Additionally, since the war was fought primarily in the South the preservation of their home-front became a prime motivator for Confederate soldiers.
Most indentured servants were just decent working class British, would you judge Australia , or NZ as harshly? Southern whites should keep heads held high. The author is Jewish, and I guess not a native of the south, though she is clever, but is she the best to write about old America? How many Jews were living the n the US pre civil war? Why paint the south as Inbred <<cut>>
Moderator cut: This isn't the politics forum. , IMO the great southern states.?
Just an aside:
Not only was there was a large Sephardic Jewish community in Charleston, South Carolina prior to the Civil War, one of the Jefferson Davis' cabinet members was a Jewish man (Judah Benjamin) who served as Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State (not all at once and not necessarily in order if memory serves me correctly).
Prior to the Civil War, he was also the first (openly, i.e., he had not converted to Christianity) Jewish person elected to the U.S. Senate.
Most of the Civil War was fought in southern states on southern territory.
I suspect most southerners felt the yankees were simply foreign invaders that needed to be repelled. In short, many southern soldiers were fighting to preserve their homes and their farms in the same way that Russians fought to preserve their homes from invading Germans in World War II. So, slavery did not directly enter into it for a very large number of confederate soldiers.
Add into this that the behavior of many northern soldiers left much to be desired. Its one thing to follow orders and march into someone's territory. Its another thing to systematically loot their farms and take all their food and personal possessions because a war is going on. Much of the destruction was unnecessary and totally capricious. Why kill all of a farmer's hogs and cattle when you already have enough food to meet the needs of your army? Why take his silverware and china when such acts do not aid the war effort? Much of the bitterness that followed the Civil War did not result from the Union Army marching into southern states. It resulted from wanton and unnecessary acts of theft, looting, and destruction that took place during the march south. Sherman's March through Georgia was one example of something that did not need to occur. It had little to no military value.
It was simply done to punish people who had sided with the Confederacy during the war.
^This. The South was invaded - the Confederate states belived they had the right to seceed. Remember, it was less than 100 years since the American Revolution. George Washington is the figure in the center of the Confederate seal. They joined the US voluntarily and felt they had the right to leave, just as the colonies felt they had a right to revolt against England.
I have a history degree and studied the Old South, and Civil War and Reconstruction. You really need to read senior college level texts to get it all. We used a text "The Old South" but I don't remember the author. An excellent look at life on a plantation for women is "Plantation Mistriss" An excelled text on the War is "Civil War and Reconstruction" by J. G Randall (Un of Illinois) and David Doonald (Johns Hopkins Un).
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. Robert E. Lee was a competent and conscientious officer, but when queried, he explained upon a number of occasions that his first loyalty was to Virginia.
And as Ken Burns pointed pot in his well-received, albeit over-sentimentalized documentary of nearly thirty years ago, prior to 1860, the statecraft of the times was always couched in the language "the United Sates are'; after 1865, the phrase became "the United States is".
A fascinating add. Here's a link for a bit more for a short read.
If a person had enough money, he could buy his way out of being drafted by the Confederate Army by paying somebody to go in his place. That tells me the Confederacy only cared about the rich and didn't give a g.d. about the poor whites. The war was pretty much fought on behalf of the wealthy plantation owners. The slaves were a big portion of their wealth. They didn't want to lose their slaves. They lose their slaves and their wealth is "gone with wind".
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Hear, hear!
