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This. The South had no chance unless the North gave up.
Outgunned and outnumbered. That was the South in a nutshell. That and the zeal for keeping the institution of slavery, which would be the South's undoing.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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Confederate leaders knew they couldn't win a man to man war, the goal was to kill enough Union troops to make Union voters want to stop and come to terms. The only reason Lee went into PA was to do that, not to conquer land for the CSA. The South had a backwards economic system that depended on industrial allies to supply the things they couldn't produce without cities and good public education and infrastructure. Had the CSA won they wanted to expand south into slave states in Latin America. After losing thousands of White Southerners even left for Brazil, many stayed permanently. Brazil ended up banning slavery later but still has far more problems with income inequality and less developed economy than the USA and Canada.
Confederate leaders knew they couldn't win a man to man war, the goal was to kill enough Union troops to make Union voters want to stop and come to terms. The only reason Lee went into PA was to do that, not to conquer land for the CSA. The South had a backwards economic system that depended on industrial allies to supply the things they couldn't produce without cities and good public education and infrastructure. Had the CSA won they wanted to expand south into slave states in Latin America. After losing thousands of White Southerners even left for Brazil, many stayed permanently. Brazil ended up banning slavery later but still has far more problems with income inequality and less developed economy than the USA and Canada.
The Confederates were counting on the Union to give up. They were counting on civilians to say "enough". Grit, and dogged determination. Plenty of people were willing to die for the Union.
The South could have been a bigger industrial producer than it became. The southern aristocracy was against industrialization. The idea was that the southern way of life was to be a life of leisure and hierarchy. Slavery wasn't just an economic system. It was part of the antebellum hierarchy. The slave-owning class couldn't imagine life without it. The Antebellum South was slow to do things like build up the public education system for everyone. It was slow to industrialize. It was slow to do something besides perpetuate the plantation economy.
The South had so much potential to industrialize. Iron ore and coal in what is now Birmingham, AL. Oddly, Birmingham wasn't even established until 1871, after the war ended.
Ironically, what the Confederates were fighting for ended up hurting them. Blacks weren't even allowed to fight for the Confederacy until the very end. Blacks mostly fought for the North despite mostly being from the South. This added to the South being outnumbered.
Anyone who wouldn't vote for the Civil Rights Act is someone I have no respect for. It is someone I won't vote for. The Civil Rights Act is something that was very much needed.
Left to its own devices, the South would have kept on with slavery. It took force and a war for slavery to end. It took federal troops to enforce Reconstruction-era gains. When Reconstruction ended and federal troops left it up to the South, Jim Crow came in and lasted for almost a century. Black people started leaving the South in what is known as the Great Migration. Those who stayed, well, they just had to deal with it. When Black people and any allies started standing up against Jim Crow, they were met with violence. It took the Supreme Court and all kinds of federal force (in addition to the Civil Rights movement) to dismantle Jim Crow.
There is a pattern. It took force to get the South to behave. It took federal force to make all kinds of discrimination illegal across America. I have to assume that Ron and Rand were in favor of how things worked under Jim Crow. I would never vote for those two.
Agree there is a pattern, & agree it’s outlandish to defend libertaryans. Those who do, are, as is usual, speaking ‘out of both sides of the mouth’. ‘Out of one side’, they oppose honoring Martin Luther King, while ‘out of the other’ blissfully ignore the more than 48,000 statues, plaques, parks & obelisks across the country to honor Robert E Lee alone.
‘Out of one side’, they decry the cost of Congressional Medals, while ‘out of the other’ blissfully ignore the fact that United States taxpayers have directed $40 million to Confederate statues, homes, parks, museums, libraries, & cemeteries, as well as to Confederate heritage organizations, over the past decade alone.
‘Out of one side’, they virtue signal monotonously & nonsensically about how they, & they alone are ‘virtuous’ regarding the Civil Rights Acts, while ‘out of the other’ blissfully ignore the fact that Civil Rights Acts banned employment discrimination, & repealed the Jim Crow laws which forced segregated schools, bathrooms, & buses.
One person did die; it was an unfortunate accident. (Both Union and Confederate concur)
The shot that was fired, was an, it is passed time for you boys to vacate the Ft. It was to be fired at 3:20 a.m. but the mortar that hit the dirt, wasn't fired until 4:30. At 7:00 the Union troops began firing on Confederates as Anderson had yet (besides numerous telegraphs in asking to leave; he had heard nothing of his request) a response from his government.
This (accident) was enough for Lincoln to paint the Confederate troops as the aggressor.
The problem was that Lincoln was not about to order surrender of U.S. territory nor recognize the Confederacy. The decision point was to re-provision Fort Sumter. See New York Times article, April 10, 1861 (link). At that point it was "off to the races."
If interested in reading the article and you are paywalled, I have saved the PDF and will email it on request by DM.
Is it raced based when the culture practice was in Africa, long before the white man arrived on the scene? It was probably the Arabs that told the Europeans where they could find laborers ...
"Nwaubani Ogogo was a slave trader who gained power and wealth by selling other Africans across the Atlantic. “He was a renowned trader,” my father told me proudly. “He dealt in palm produce and human beings.”
<snip>
“Are you not ashamed of what he did?” I asked.
“I can never be ashamed of him,” he said, irritated. “Why should I be? His business was legitimate at the time. He was respected by everyone around.” My father is a lawyer and a human-rights activist who has spent much of his life challenging government abuses in southeast Nigeria.
<snip>
African intellectuals tend to blame the West for the slave trade, but I knew that white traders couldn’t have loaded their ships without help from Africans like my great-grandfather. I read arguments for paying reparations to the descendants of American slaves and wondered whether someone might soon expect my family to contribute."
Today there are 40 million enslaved, because same as then, human trade provides the funding for war, as well as, ingrained within the culture.
"Slavery existed among the Igbo long before colonization, but it accelerated in the sixteenth century, when the transatlantic trade began and demand for slaves increased. Under slavery, Igbo society was divided into three main categories: diala, ohu, and osu.
<snip>
Westerners trying to understand the Igbo system often reach for its similarities with the oppression of black Americans. This analogy is helpful but imperfect. Igbo discrimination is not based on race, and there are no visual markers to differentiate slave descendants from freeborn. Instead, it trades on cultural beliefs about lineage and spirituality."
Slavery was a condition that was practiced around the world that without its existence there wouldn't have been any Africans in the u.s. to begin with to be made to believe the war was all about them.
Just as those that were discovered in concentration camps in Germany was a by-product of the German involvement in WWII, the emancipation was a by-product of the civil war between 2 governments in the u.s. Neither event was the purpose of either war --- no one set out to accomplish what became the end result of either conflict.
Knowing that --- I know what it would take to free the 40 million enslaved today and for the world to find value in their lives, a WWIII.
"No data exists on the number of slave descendants in southeastern Nigeria today; it is rarely studied, and the stigma often compels people to keep silent about their status. (Ugo Nwokeji, a professor at Berkeley who studies the issue, estimates that five to ten per cent of Igbos, which would mean millions of people in Nigeria, are osu, and likely an equivalent number are ohu.) Recently, slave descendants have begun agitating for equality, staging protests, and pressuring politicians." [from the story above]
Not something that "the American Civil War was ALL about slavery" crowd wants to hear but every word the plain truth. The South certainly was not fighting only on the issue of slavery but we hear that they were from quite a few posters here some being rabidly intractable in that position and refusing to believe anything else. "The South had slavery written into their constitution" is usually the foundation of their argument and they see that as all the proof needed to support that argument.
Uh huh, and in 1863 when the slavery issue was put forth by the Union, the same Union who's people supposedly were on board with that great and lofty moral cause, and Lincoln imposed a draft to field men to support it NYC went up in flames and Blacks were hung, beaten, burned and otherwise murdered in complete commitment to eradicating slavery and freeing all Blacks in the US. Yep folks in the North were just beaming with approval.
Lincolns use of slavery as a uniting moral goal didn't work out so well. If we were able to ask any soldier on either side if they were fighting the war to free the slaves the question would be met mostly by a poignant "are you serious" look. And if we were able to ask even the most ardent abolishonist of that period if they would support the elevation of freed Blacks to a special protected status and the idea of monetary reparations with money from their assets and every other taxpaying Americans assets (specifically White taxpayers) to be paid even to 4th generation descendants of freed Blacks as a serious proposition they would melt into the dirt.
The ending of slavery was indeed a byproduct of the war, not a main goal. If it was indeed a main goal why then did it take a century for Blacks to receive even a semblance of equal recognition? There's just to many facts standing in the way of ending slavery as being the main focus of the Union and keeping it as the main focus in the Confederacy for that position to be solid.
One person did die; it was an unfortunate accident. (Both Union and Confederate concur)
The shot that was fired, was an, it is passed time for you boys to vacate the Ft. It was to be fired at 3:20 a.m. but the mortar that hit the dirt, wasn't fired until 4:30. At 7:00 the Union troops began firing on Confederates as Anderson had yet (besides numerous telegraphs in asking to leave; he had heard nothing of his request) a response from his government.
This (accident) was enough for Lincoln to paint the Confederate troops as the aggressor.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbgusa
The problem was that Lincoln was not about to order surrender of U.S. territory nor recognize the Confederacy. The decision point was to re-provision Fort Sumter. See New York Times article, April 10, 1861 (link). At that point it was "off to the races."
If interested in reading the article and you are paywalled, I have saved the PDF and will email it on request by DM.
Thanks, the link to a pdf worked and I have it opened to read in a minute. If that is the one you are referencing, I got it.
The recap I gave came from the telegraphed messages ( The War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official ... ser.1:v.1. ) from the officers serving both government's military. The Union did try to re-provision Ft Sumter, but the mission failed. I also got the distinct feeling that Anderson thought what he was being made to do was wrong.
The troops seemed to have great respect for each other.
Lincoln not about to order surrender of u.s. territory is interesting, when all of the Southern Forts had been vacated by Union troops without incident, but the one. And the first shot everyone keeps talking about that depicts the Confederates aggression, was a signal mortar that hit the dirt after days of negotiations back and forth.
Not something that "the American Civil War was ALL about slavery" crowd wants to hear but every word the plain truth. The South certainly was not fighting only on the issue of slavery but we hear that they were from quite a few posters here some being rabidly intractable in that position and refusing to believe anything else. "The South had slavery written into their constitution" is usually the foundation of their argument and they see that as all the proof needed to support that argument.
Uh huh, and in 1863 when the slavery issue was put forth by the Union, the same Union who's people supposedly were on board with that great and lofty moral cause, and Lincoln imposed a draft to field men to support it NYC went up in flames and Blacks were hung, beaten, burned and otherwise murdered in complete commitment to eradicating slavery and freeing all Blacks in the US. Yep folks in the North were just beaming with approval.
Lincolns use of slavery as a uniting moral goal didn't work out so well. If we were able to ask any soldier on either side if they were fighting the war to free the slaves the question would be met mostly by a poignant "are you serious" look. And if we were able to ask even the most ardent abolishonist of that period if they would support the elevation of freed Blacks to a special protected status and the idea of monetary reparations with money from their assets and every other taxpaying Americans assets (specifically White taxpayers) to be paid even to 4th generation descendants of freed Blacks as a serious proposition they would melt into the dirt.
The ending of slavery was indeed a byproduct of the war, not a main goal. If it was indeed a main goal why then did it take a century for Blacks to receive even a semblance of equal recognition? There's just to many facts standing in the way of ending slavery as being the main focus of the Union and keeping it as the main focus in the Confederacy for that position to be solid.
Are you familiar with John Mosby?
A Former Confederate officer on slavery and the Civil War, 1907
Is it raced based when the culture practice was in Africa, long before the white man arrived on the scene? It was probably the Arabs that told the Europeans where they could find laborers ...
"Nwaubani Ogogo was a slave trader who gained power and wealth by selling other Africans across the Atlantic. “He was a renowned trader,” my father told me proudly. “He dealt in palm produce and human beings.”
<snip>
“Are you not ashamed of what he did?” I asked.
“I can never be ashamed of him,” he said, irritated. “Why should I be? His business was legitimate at the time. He was respected by everyone around.” My father is a lawyer and a human-rights activist who has spent much of his life challenging government abuses in southeast Nigeria.
<snip>
African intellectuals tend to blame the West for the slave trade, but I knew that white traders couldn’t have loaded their ships without help from Africans like my great-grandfather. I read arguments for paying reparations to the descendants of American slaves and wondered whether someone might soon expect my family to contribute."
Today there are 40 million enslaved, because same as then, human trade provides the funding for war, as well as, ingrained within the culture.
"Slavery existed among the Igbo long before colonization, but it accelerated in the sixteenth century, when the transatlantic trade began and demand for slaves increased. Under slavery, Igbo society was divided into three main categories: diala, ohu, and osu.
<snip>
Westerners trying to understand the Igbo system often reach for its similarities with the oppression of black Americans. This analogy is helpful but imperfect. Igbo discrimination is not based on race, and there are no visual markers to differentiate slave descendants from freeborn. Instead, it trades on cultural beliefs about lineage and spirituality."
Slavery was a condition that was practiced around the world that without its existence there wouldn't have been any Africans in the u.s. to begin with to be made to believe the war was all about them.
Just as those that were discovered in concentration camps in Germany was a by-product of the German involvement in WWII, the emancipation was a by-product of the civil war between 2 governments in the u.s. Neither event was the purpose of either war --- no one set out to accomplish what became the end result of either conflict.
Knowing that --- I know what it would take to free the 40 million enslaved today and for the world to find value in their lives, a WWIII.
"No data exists on the number of slave descendants in southeastern Nigeria today; it is rarely studied, and the stigma often compels people to keep silent about their status. (Ugo Nwokeji, a professor at Berkeley who studies the issue, estimates that five to ten per cent of Igbos, which would mean millions of people in Nigeria, are osu, and likely an equivalent number are ohu.) Recently, slave descendants have begun agitating for equality, staging protests, and pressuring politicians." [from the story above]
Quote:
Originally Posted by NVplumber
Not something that "the American Civil War was ALL about slavery" crowd wants to hear but every word the plain truth. The South certainly was not fighting only on the issue of slavery but we hear that they were from quite a few posters here some being rabidly intractable in that position and refusing to believe anything else. "The South had slavery written into their constitution" is usually the foundation of their argument and they see that as all the proof needed to support that argument.
Uh huh, and in 1863 when the slavery issue was put forth by the Union, the same Union who's people supposedly were on board with that great and lofty moral cause, and Lincoln imposed a draft to field men to support it NYC went up in flames and Blacks were hung, beaten, burned and otherwise murdered in complete commitment to eradicating slavery and freeing all Blacks in the US. Yep folks in the North were just beaming with approval.
Lincolns use of slavery as a uniting moral goal didn't work out so well. If we were able to ask any soldier on either side if they were fighting the war to free the slaves the question would be met mostly by a poignant "are you serious" look. And if we were able to ask even the most ardent abolishonist of that period if they would support the elevation of freed Blacks to a special protected status and the idea of monetary reparations with money from their assets and every other taxpaying Americans assets (specifically White taxpayers) to be paid even to 4th generation descendants of freed Blacks as a serious proposition they would melt into the dirt.
The ending of slavery was indeed a byproduct of the war, not a main goal. If it was indeed a main goal why then did it take a century for Blacks to receive even a semblance of equal recognition? There's just to many facts standing in the way of ending slavery as being the main focus of the Union and keeping it as the main focus in the Confederacy for that position to be solid.
And the change --- people could no longer be taxed as property. (ergo, 40 million enslaved today in a multi-billion dollar industry)
In 1787 the Northwest Ordinance art 6, eight Southern votes carried the move to abolish slavery in new territories. In the same year at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, the u.s. Constitution put it back and made importation legal not to be discussed again for 20 years. History is silent on the significance of the Northwest Ordinance and the Southern vote in passing it under the American Confederation of Congress. (a perpetual union and a Congress that had no power to legislate)
The Constitutions the Confederate States adopted in law for the States did not make the importation of slaves legal. (if you do not feed it, it will die a natural death) But as you say, those are the go to documents, that slavery was the foundation for the war.
At my first read of the Articles of Secession, I must admit, I thought they were right. However, those documents talk about something other than slavery, they list grievances as well, with the North offering 'none better'. Okay so what does that mean to me? It means read the State Constitutions of the Northern Territories. Illinois 1818 Constitution (there are several so I may have the one wrong) the ex-slave could work in the Salt Mines without a wage, but three hots and a cot. Which means the North didn't want them stealing their jobs. (none better, they could not receive an education; nor could they own property)
With the power given to Congress to legislate (a more perfect union by the u.s. Constitution) its power is delegated to it by the States. At the time before the war the Northern States had 183 Delegates to the Southern States 120. There is no party R & D --- there are Northern Interests; there are Southern Interests --- the power to see to its interests rest in the North to legislate, Southern States yielded.
The Federal government legislates u.s. citizenry and at no time from the signing of the u.s. Constitution till after the war began did the u.s. Constitution or Congress by vote make u.s. citizens of its slaves. The States could make citizens of the slaves, but they must resided within that State as they were not free to move about the country, per federal law.
And what is silent in these discussions is the laws of the Northern States and the power they held to make everyone residing in the u.s. citizens. At any time they could have convened Congress with a motion.
Thus freeing the slaves became a by-product of a war. And the Confederacy lost, because they mismanaged their funds.
Last edited by Ellis Bell; 02-12-2022 at 10:14 AM..
You know there are some pretty good books on this subject....especially the scholarship that has arisen over the past 30 years. Here is one of those authors David Blight concerning Civil War memory and how the US had to put itself back together. I just thought it is appropriate in this thread.
Winner of the Bancroft Prize
Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
Winner of the Merle Curti Award
Winner of the Frederick Douglass Prize
No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America’s collective memory as the Civil War. In the war’s aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America’s national reunion.
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are ‘virtuous’ regarding the Civil Rights Acts, while ‘out of the other’ blissfully ignore the fact that Civil Rights Acts banned employment discrimination, & repealed the Jim Crow laws which forced segregated schools, bathrooms, & buses.
