Posted on 01/24/2014 8:00:53 AM PST by rockrr
It seems fitting that the de facto anthem of the Confederacy during the Civil War, which some people might still be shocked to learn the North won, turned out to be "Dixie."
After all, since Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox there's been no shortage of looking away, looking away at the reality of history when it comes to the Civil War.
Nowhere is that full flower of denial more apparent than among the followers of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which is upset about a proposal to erect a monument to Union soldiers who died in the Battle of Olustee, regarded by historians as the largest and deadliest engagement in Florida during the "wowrah." Related News/Archive
Next month marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Olustee, about 45 miles west of Jacksonville. Some 2,000 Union troops died in the conflict, while 1,000 Confederate soldiers also perished in an engagement that did not substantially alter the course of the Civil War.
The 3-acre Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park includes three monuments honoring the Confederate troops who fought and died in the encounter. But when the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War pushed for a memorial on the site to pay homage to the sacrifices of their forbearers, hostilities ensued. So did illiterate silliness.
(Excerpt) Read more at tampabay.com ...
I’m not surprised that you are in denial. You’re in denial about lots of things.
Yeah, whatever you say little man. You bore me so feel free to have the last word.
Arguing on an forum like this one is not rude.
But it appears to bring out the worst in some people.
FRiend, you are obviously a world-class Master of Obfuscation, and should be rightly proud of your skills.
Regardless, facts are still facts.
We are having this discussion because pro-Confederates often claim that: "only 6%" (or some similarly small number) of Southerners owned slaves, and therefore, "slavery" was not their motivation for fighting the Civil War.
There are, of course, numerous problems with that assertion, and...
So: when that young son said he was fighting to preserve "our way of life", he certainly did include his right to own slaves.
Here is the important point in this: a state's commitment to the cause of Confederacy was directly proportional to the percentage of its households which owned slaves.
Like all pro-Confederates, you totally misunderstand the northern mind-set.
You fantasize that northerners wish to blame the South and exonerate the North of all wrong-doing.
You imagine that's how we justify invading and largely destroying the ante-bellum Southern "way of life".
Nothing could be more mistaken.
In fact, the Union -- for whatever its sins and wrongdoings -- invaded the Confederacy only after the Confederacy first provoked, started and formally declared war on the United States, on May 6, 1861.
Freeing the slaves came later.
Even "restoring the Union" was not President Lincoln's original goal in April 1861.
At that point all he wanted to do was maintain Federal ownership of various properties, i.e., Fort Sumter.
Point is: Civil War came because the Confederacy started it.
Only then did the Union determine to finish it, properly.
History records that the townspeople and farmers were generally astonished by the civil behavior of Lee's army which traded or paid fair prices for everything they got. There was one case of an army unit swarming a hat shop in McConnellsburg, taking hats and leaving beat up headgear in exchange. Their CO ordered the men to either return the hats they took or pay for them. They did.
BroJoeK,
If the census statistics are correct that ~40% of people in the southern states were slaves, and that was a fairly constant number from state to state, then there is a problem with your assertion that higher percentages of whites owned slaves in the deep south than the upper south.
The issue is that the very, very large plantations, held and run by single families were much more common in the deep south. These large plantations would have hundreds, even thousands of slaves. Pure math would then lead to the conclusion that you had fewer owners of larger numbers of slaves in the deep south and more owners of smaller numbers of slaves in the upper south.
In reference to your overall presumptions, IF your 6% figure is correct and only applied to heads of households, you still have to have an extremely large average family size to get to 50% of whites being in a slave holding family. If the average number of slaves held was only 2, then only 33% of white families could have owned slaves, before the supply was exhausted. And the average was a lot higher than 2.
Before you get too preachy, do the simple math.
I'm never "preachy", and I have done the math.
SampleMan: "If the census statistics are correct that ~40% of people in the southern states were slaves, and that was a fairly constant number from state to state..."
FRiend, those census numbers are readily available, and I even set up a little spreadsheet to calculate the percentages.
First, let me ask you this question: do you grasp the historical concept of "Deep South", versus "Upper South", versus "Border States"?
If you don't "get" that, then you know literally nothing -- zero, zip, nada -- about the Civil War.
So, do I need to explain it to you in great detail?
The first seven states to secede, circa January 1861, were the Deep South -- South Carolina west to Texas.
In those seven states, the percentage of slaves was over 50% in South Carolina and Mississippi, but only 30% in Texas.
Overall, in the original Confederacy, slaves made up 47% of the population.
In those Deep South states, the percentage of slave-owning families ranged from about 50% in South Carolina and Mississippi down to 30% in Louisiana and Texas.
The four Upper South states refused to secede, just because Lincoln's "Black Republicans" got elected in 1860.
But after the Deep South provoked, started and declared war on the United States, then Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas felt compelled to join the Confederacy.
In the Upper South, the slave population ranged from 31% in Virginia to 26% in Arkansas, averaging 29% overall.
Their percentage of slave-owning households ranged from 28% in North Carolina to 20% in Arkansas, averaging 25%.
The four Border States (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri) refused to join the Confederacy, even after it declared war.
One reason is obvious: in those Border States, the slave population ranged from 20% in Kentucky down to just 2% in Delaware.
The percentage of slave-owning households ranged from 23% in Kentucky down to 3% in Delaware, averaging 16% overall.
The important point to remember here is that both the numbers of slaves and percentage of slave-owning families fell as you travelled from Deep South through Upper South to the Border States.
And that fact alone goes a long way towards explaining both why the Deep South started the Civil War, and why they eventually lost it.
Thaddeus Stevens was a US Congressman, not Senator.
There is no record of Confederate troops destroying Union steel mills, whether they belonged to Stevens or anybody else.
Confederate troops did invade and destroy or seize property in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania three different times -- in October 1862, June-July 1863 and July-August 1864 (none of those raids lasted longer than a few days):
Indeed, "Remember Chambersburg" became a battle-cry of Union troops under General Sherman in Georgia.
Brings out the best in me.
Unfortunately paid in worthless Confederate money, but a deal the shop owners couldn't refuse.
So by your determination. 50% of the families in SC owned twice as many slaves, as they had members of their own household, which by the census of 1860 would have been 5.63 people per family, or >11 slaves. Given that we are also told that the market value of a slave was equivalent to about $100,000 today, that would make 50% of the families in SC very well off. We must also presume that each of those families had enough land to keep 11 slaves working productively to produce enough for the slaves to live and the family to get some productive return on that $1.1 million investment. Was that possible?
Its hard to argue with the census, unfortunately I find different numbers for the 1860 census every time I look, which makes it difficult to know which to believe.
When 40-50% or more of the population is slaves, there is no doubt that slavery was a huge factor in the economy. It doesn't matter whether it was narrow and deep, or wide and shallow.
>> Sons of Confederate Veterans, which is upset about a proposal to erect a monument to Union soldiers who died in the Battle of Olustee
The South should not be obligated to honor the Union soldiers who died there.
That’s Sectional thinking. Most of us are beyond that now.
No, it’s about respecting the province of others.
As a Northerner, I see no reason to compel our Southern friends to honor aggressors of the past.
As an American I despise the treason of the southron slavrocracy but honor the brave soldiers - north and south. No one is compelling anyone to do anything.
So should Southern memorials be removed from Gettysburg?
What’s the reasoning behind that question?
So do you despise the thousands of blacks who owned slaves?
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