Posted on 08/25/2008 9:11:18 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
There's a lot of historical evidence out there that indicates the idea of a united Confederate South is a myth.
This is about that new book you told me about a couple of weeks ago.
Bump for later...
How did all of this take so long to get out?
The proud Southern Heritage of the Confederacy represented by the “Rebel flag” as you call it, most likely was a by-product of Reconstruction, more than a yearning for the days of the Confederacy.
If the whole of the South wasn’t united before that occupation period, and it likely wasn’t, the actions of the occupiers sealed the deal.
It took that long to dream it all up.
Its always been there.
I am not sure why this is considered so “revolutionary.”
I know that there are places in Alabama where secession was not favored - Fort Payne, Alabama still has a “Union Park” because the secession was generally not supported in that area.
I have been to Looney’s Tavern in Winston County, Alabama as well - they used to put on a show telling the story of Winston County’s secession from the state of Alabama over the secession issue. I bet that the “Free State of Winston” is not discussed much in today’s history books - would detract from the narrative that the South was uniformly racist and bigoted.
Both of the above areas were generally poor rural areas where there were not many slave holders.
Part of it is typical public school watered-down history. Growing up in the South, I was spoon fed the hooray for Dixie and the Confederacy myth. It was only when I started looking for myself into what was actually said and done back them that I began to realize that the actual situation was a lot more complicated than a mere North versus South war.
ITT: >9000 posts, death threats, and several bans.
Sounds like a Yankee dis-information plan to me.
Actually, I said this in my 2006 book, "America's Victories: Why the U.S. Wins Wars," although the number I gave was 100,000 southern whites. I'm anxious to see his source on this, because it only strengthens my case.
But it didn't help the South that in 11 of the first 12 major battles or campaigns in which more than 6,000 men were involved, the Confederacy lost a higher % of troops deployed than did the Union, even though the Union occasionally lost more men in real terms. You can't win a war, particularly a defensive war, losing more in every engagement with the enemy.
(Looking for popcorn. This is going to be good.)
Ping
No, it's American history.
A lot of Southerners have been propagandized out of taking pride in their Unionist forebears and a lot of Northerners have conveniently forgotten about their defeatist, Copperhead forebears.
The historical fact is that "the American South" and "The Confederacy" are not synonyms.
The secession "vote" in Georgia would have done Al Gore's Florida team proud.
And how united were the northern states?
why am I not surprisd....I knew you two were in cahoots.
lol
oh goody...I see all the South bashers are here...let's see revisionists, black republican club.....where are the Star Wars guys?
I miss them. They mustn't neglect the chance for a little denigration of the only reliable conservative part of the country we got left aside from Indiana and Idaho and Wyoming.
this is one of those "I'm shocked i tell ya" threads
I’m wondering if he’s including West Virginians in that 300,000 figure. That seems like an awfully high number considering the population of the South at the time.
The divisions in the Southern population aren’t really new news. I remember hearing a lot about it studying history growing up in Virginia. There were some absolutely vicious mini “civil wars” in the mountain counties of North Carolina and Tennessee between Unionists and Confederates. Many of the counties that are now in the Shenendoah Valley in Virginia barely stayed in the Union when the western counties split off to become West Virginia—and this despite the tremendous victories Stonewall Jackson won on that very same soil in 1862. The story my college history prof told me was that Rockingham County, Virginia (where I went to college at JMU) stayed in Virginia by one single vote. The generals like Lee and Jackson were revered up there, but the war was by no means popular.
Folks up in the Piedmont and toward the mountains generally didn’t own slaves, or at least not nearly as many as the rich planters along the coast. Appealing to their loyalty as Northerners invaded their home states worked to a point (especially in Virginia) but for folks further up in the mountains in places like West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, they didn’t feel like they wanted to get involved in a rich man’s war.
The truth’s in the middle—yes, having 500,000 Southerners (white and black) fighting for the Union definitely made things worse for the Confederacy. But the North’s crushing industrial superiority was decisive, as well as them finally finding generals like Grant and Sherman willing to take that material superiority and use it to grind the South down. BTW, it doesn’t surprise me that the Urinal-Constipation takes an opportunity to pee on the former Georgia state flag and the SCV in general. I imagine the idiots at the AJC were big fans of King Roy’s Placemat.
}:-)4
That's the Democrats' game for sure. Southerners need to learn the true facts so as not to fall into the leftists' trap.
I remember seeing a print of Lee handing these battle flags to regiments of the Army of Northern Virginia. There should have been a loud outcry throughout the South when the Klan adopted the battle flag as its emblem. I think that is a point when the Southerner irretrievably compromised his heritage, and disfigured the image of arguably the finest infantry this country ever produced.
I think people could answer most of those questions themselves after watching Ken Burn’s history, so it should not be new. I remember one line in the television series where someone says the South died of a concept.
Sherman’s march through Georgia highlights the power, yet disinterest of the planter aristocracy of the South. There were food riots in Georgia, yet Sherman’s army never lived better than when it plundered the plantations.
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