"Breaking News", the South Lost the Civil War. Vanity

self | 9/26/02 | tall_tex

[tall_tex]

I have been watching Ken Burns, "Civil War Series" again. I do not know why I keep watching and holding out hope that this time we might just win.

My sad announcement, is that we did not win, this time either.

Why did we loose, surely we had God on our side.

Why do the good guys continue to loose, Roy and Dale won, the Lone Ranger and Tonto won.

The Clinton's win, the Dash@@786450897, have and are winning still, and again.

I guess good guys finish last, maybe we should not be such good guys.

[The Person]

YOU WROTE: "It's been documented many times Republican focus was on industrialization and tariffs, not on freeing the slaves."

MY REPLY:

Do you honestly believe that the Civil War was over tariffs?

Just so you don't think I bash all Southerners, I'll share Peggy Noonan's recent comments about the South and the reaction to the Muslim doctors who thought they'd play a prank on a Georgia woman.

THE REST IS PEGGY NOONAN:

They sensed the questioning within the gazes, and they thought it would be amusing to show these stupid and uneducated Southern people, these dumb crackers, these yokels, who was boss. You think we're bad guys? We'll show you bad guys.

And so one of them or a few of them said the things Eunice Stone says she overheard. Talk about explosions, references to Sept. 11, talk about how Sept. 13 will be even bigger.

And Ms. Stone, alarmed, put herself on the line. She called the police and told them what she'd heard. She was interviewed by them repeatedly and exhaustively. She did everything she could to see that the young Muslim males were stopped.

The young Muslim males took off in their cars, driving south. They were stopped in Florida, where police closed a highway for an entire day as robots searched their car. The young Muslim men, the police said, were not entirely cooperative. They had attitude. Certainly in their interviews after they were released, after nothing was found in their cars, they displayed plenty of attitude. They were an unsympathetic bunch, in both ways. They showed scant sympathy for those they'd inconvenienced and alarmed, and they also inspired no sympathy for their plight. Later, a sister of one of the young men went on CNN to declare that this was the South, and you know how the South is: "It has a reputation of racism."

I thought, as I watched this: It has a reputation for patriotism, too. It's why Southern men and women join the armed forces in such high numbers, and why, if the sister were ever attacked by a terrorist, they'd risk their lives to save her sorry, sanctimonious little . . . Well, as I watched I got a little mad.

The South's reputation for patriotism may be why Eunice Stone put herself on the line, and wound up overwhelmed by insults and unwanted fame, in the hospital, and ultimately being patronized--We won't sue you--by the three young Muslim males.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110002297

[rmlew]

The south went down like an altar boy!
Do we really need anti-Catholic statements?

[Twodees]

to do with the war,

Speaking of war, there's one coming. When are you gong to enlist?

[Twodees]

I've caught a lot of this series. It seems pretty good. Simultaneously, I'm reading "The Battle Cry of Freedom," which begins by describing the roles many of the better-known Civil War generals played in the earlier war with Mexico.

You're watching the work of a communist revisionist on PBS and reading the propaganda of a communist "historian", so why not go ahead and register democrat so you can vote in a fashion to match all this new knowledge you're acquiring?

[E Rocc]

Had it not been for the issue of slavery the Federals would've had very little moral ground on which to stand in prohibiting secession. Because of this peculiar institution and preservation of it was the actual reason that secession was sought, meant that those seeking to save the Union were left with the moral higher ground.

Remember that the war started when the rebels attacked federal property.

The Confederates seceded in an effort to preserve a way of life which was rapidly becoming antiquated and was eventually doomed. Slavery was a very visible and extremely objectionable symbol of that way of life, and was indeed an integral part, as was the legislated inferiority of free blacks.

Indeed, in their desire to hang on to the ways of the past they resembled environmentalist Luddites more than modern conservatives. Ironically, to even stay in the war as long as they did they had to become what they opposed, an industrialized state with increasing federal perogatives, particularly regarding the military.

-Eric

[Larry Lucido]

so why not go ahead and register democrat so you can vote in a fashion to match all this new knowledge you're acquiring?

Oh, maybe because Democrats were the pro-slavery party then, just as they are now? Next stupid question, please.

[CobaltBlue]

The reason I argue that slavery was the motivation for secession is because I have actually read every Article of Secession and every one of them said that they were seceding because they wanted to preserve slavery.

You could look it up.

I have lived in the South my entire life. I was taught that the Civil War was about state's rights, and tariffs, not slavery.

Actually reading the Articles of Secession opened my eyes.

[CobaltBlue]

It is my understanding that only four states published declarations of the cause of secession.
http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/plat.html

All four of them stated that slavery was the reason, including Texas.
http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/reasons.html#Texas

The more northerly states favored the Crittendon Compromise, which would have maintained slavery in the slave-holding states. After the failure of the Crittendon Compromise, the rest of the slave-holding states seceded.

[stainlessbanner]

Do you honestly believe that the Civil War was over tariffs?

Do you honestly believe that the WBTS was over slavery?

[CobaltBlue]

You're getting things backwards.

The reason it wasn't a "war to free the slaves" is that the North did not start the war, the South did.

The South seceded in order to keep slaves.

The North fought in order to preserve the Union.

[stainlessbanner]

So the slave weren't victims?

The victims were the 600,000 men who gave their lives (black, white, etc) and many more who were wounded, left financially broke, lost their homes, businesses, and families both North and South.

[Corin Stormhands]

Do you honestly believe that the WBTS was over slavery?

And even more of a fantasy that the war was all about slavery is the "fact" that the North can claim some moral high ground for "ending slavery."

The war was NOT about slavery until Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

But I'd almost be willing to concede the slavery issue if the North would admit what we all know to be true.

The North only wanted an "end" to slavery because slavery was no longer profitable for them.. There was no moral outcry (or if it was there it was very small) to free the slaves. And when the union actually enlisted black soldiers, thousands of white union soldiers deserted.

So fine. Say the war was about slavery. But it was about the economics of slavery, not the morality of slavery.

The North may have "wanted" to free the slaves. But they would have fought the war all over again to keep them from moving in next door.

[CobaltBlue]

At any rate, the war was not to end slavery, it was to preserve the Union. On that, I am sure we can agree.

Nevertheless, secession was motivated by the desire to retain slaves, which were of great economic importance to southern states, especially those in the Cotton Belt.