Civil War Battles
These are the most interesting because they focus on the players, the strategies, and the hard historical facts. It's too bad that they are so rare.
Was it Legal?
These threads center around the morality, legality, and consequence of the south's secession. These are more contentious, largely because they are so subjective. I know that some people seem to believe they hold the whole elenchu-lada, there have been dozens and dozens of these threads and no one has achieved concord yet.
Damn Yankees - or It Was Lincoln's Fault
This is the specialty of the lost causers. They find some lost cause mythology on the web that trashes Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, or some other northern person. Lincoln was bad. Lincoln was a tyrant. Lincoln was a homo. Lincoln was a vampire slayer. They are foolishly insipid but a lot of fun.
This last summer we introduced a fourth category:
That Damned Flag
These mostly center around the concocted controversy of the confederate battle flag, but also include Civil War memorials, schools, government buildings, or any other recognition of confederate soldiers. These threads shouldn't be controversial because the vast majority of FReepers are in agreement that banning the flag is stupid, pointless, and counter-productive. The lost causers often use them as bait to start fights with non-southerners. You'll soon enough learn that, to a lost causer, if you aren't from dixie you are a south-hater. Yea I know - it's stupid - but it can be amusing.
Before too long, anyone who reads these threads becomes familiar with the 1861 "Corner Stone" speech of Alexander Stephens. In that speech, Stephens explained that there existed a fundamental difference of opinion between the secessionists and those people in the country who believed that slavery "was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically." According to Stephens, the Confederacy was founded upon a corner stone of a "great truth": "the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition."
In other words, the great corner stone of the Confederacy was racism. And, although there were many people in the US (North and South) who at that time agreed with this corner stone, it was feared by some that the historical sands were shifting and that the election of Lincoln constituted a threat to the corner stone of the culture that the secessionists wished to defend.
The corner stone of racism was a casualty of the Civil War. Since that time, it has been thoroughly repudiated. Today, the dominant culture (North and South) has become so hostile to those views that people who hold them are often afraid to even express themselves. And, these people know that the schools are teaching their children that racists are ignorant and backward. So, naturally, these people resent our current culture with all of its talk of "equality" and such.
In the long run, the Civil War effected a divorce between patriotism and racism. In modern America, a person can be a patriot or a racist, but it is very difficult to be both. In the view of some people, the great crime of the Civil War (and Lincoln) has been that over time our culture has been degraded because racism has been given the death penalty and has been replaced by notions of equality. The problem is that many of the people who feel that way do not feel free to share the real source of their frustrations. So, what we hear from them tends to sound crazy and disoriented. They talk about federal regulations, taxes, a generalized lack of freedom, etc., but they are rarely specific about any of these current issues and never clear about how in the world they can seriously claim that these current issues are the responsibility of Abraham Lincoln. I just wish that they could feel free to speak about what is really upsetting them.
What did the Declaration of Independence say about equality?