The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Edition

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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Ziggy Stardust »

Metahive wrote: I wouldn't even say that Lee was all that great a commander. Just looking at the casualty numbers of Lee's battles, the man had an awful tendency to drop his men into the meat grinder.
That's an awfully shallow way to examine battlefield success, don't you think? Certainly, Lee made blunders. Pickett's Charge being one of the most inexplicably awful battlefield decisions I can think of. But just looking at casualty numbers doesn't tell you the whole story of many battles, especially considering the degree to which the Confederates were facing better trained and better armed Union soldiers (or, for example, at the Battle of Chancellorsville, which was a brilliant victory against a much larger Union force). Look at the Seven Days Battles, for example; the reason the Confederates took so many casualties was because of mistakes made by divisional commanders like Benjamin Huger and Theophilus Holmes in the field, rather than inherent problems with Lee's battle plan.

Yes, taking heavy casualty numbers is to a certain extent a referendum on the tactical leadership, but it isn't the only one. It is also important to examine those numbers in the context of battlefield conditions, as well as broader tactical and strategic goals.

As one example, Lee was brilliant in setting up the defensive networks around Savannah and Richmond, which were key in the war lasting as long as it did. And it's not like "just anyone" could have set up those networks; at the time, Lee was mockingly called the "King of Spades" and widely ridiculed for his insistence on building systems of trenches and breastworks.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Simon_Jester »

Alyrium Denryle wrote:And when they found one (two, in fact. I consider Sherman to be one of the greatest generals the US has ever seen), they won the war Very Fucking Quickly.

The south had precisely one Great General, and that was Lee. The rest were competent at best. Good at motivating the men and brave, sure, but not full of tactical or strategic brilliance.
I think Jackson's a credible contender.
As far as I remember, the south could not even maintain a god damn butter industry. Something that basic, they could not do. They had all the raw materials, the manpower etc. They simply could not produce the damn butter. Not in quantity.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Borgholio »

I think Jackson's a credible contender.
I think Longstreet deserves some credit too. He was competent and a good leader. He also gets a bad reputation from Southern Apologists who blame him for the disaster at Gettysburg. Truth is, he was just more cautious than Lee and was willing to see past his own pride and do what was in the best interest of the army. Had Lee listened to Longstreet and not attacked the Union Center...thousands of lives could have been saved and they could potentially have avoided a crushing defeat.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Alyrium Denryle »

Metahive wrote:
Alyrium_Denryle wrote:And when they found one (two, in fact. I consider Sherman to be one of the greatest generals the US has ever seen), they won the war Very Fucking Quickly.

The south had precisely one Great General, and that was Lee. The rest were competent at best. Good at motivating the men and brave, sure, but not full of tactical or strategic brilliance.

They were just fighting McClellan who, while a fantastic logistics guy and training officer was a shitty shitty field commander with no spine.
I wouldn't even say that Lee was all that great a commander. Just looking at the casualty numbers of Lee's battles, the man had an awful tendency to drop his men into the meat grinder.

But hey, it's Grant who gets the "Butcher" label because Saint Lee's name mustn't be besmirched. Doubly ironic since Lee is probably the one man who came closer to destroying the United States than any other enemy the country ever faced.

Eeeeeeeeh. He did pretty well, considering the superior logistics of his enemies. When you are facing down an army that has a better supply train (because it has actual fucking trains), more rifled small arms, and that is not having to scrounge for artillery because it has all the steel works and foundries, it is REALLY hard not to send your men into a meat grinder.

Granted, he was facing some of the worst field commanders in US history (I am looking at YOU McClellan), but god damn.
I think Jackson's a credible contender.
The dude was batshit crazy. He was good by way of being stubborn, and had a great deal of elan. Good tactical commander. He could motivate his men to hold a position anyone else would abandon. He was also very aggressive. But lacked in situational awareness to the point that he ordered his men to camp for the night in earshot of a running battle....
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Isolder74 »

As far as the best commander that the Confederacy had that would be General Johnston. The bad thing for the Confederacy is that he was killed during the battle of Shiloh before he had a chance to show just how good he was.

Lee was rather overrated.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Ziggy Stardust »

A number of lower-level Confederate commanders demonstrated great tactical prowess, like Jubal Early and J.E.B. Stuart. Notably, it seems that, at least until the end of the war, the Confederates were simply smarter about adapting to new battlefield paradigms and engaging in non-conventional warfare (the Shenandoah Valley campaigns, for example, and some of the trans-Mississippi campaigns as limited as they were). By 1864, though, Union commanders were simply better. Sherman, Meade, Sheridan, and Grant were all brilliant in their own rights.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Ziggy Stardust »

Isolder74 wrote:As far as the best commander that the Confederacy had that would be General Johnston. The bad thing for the Confederacy is that he was killed during the battle of Shiloh before he had a chance to show just how good he was.

Lee was rather overrated.
The OTHER Confederate General Johnston (as in Joseph, not A.S.) was also better-than-advertised. His battlefield record is sub-stellar and his reputation has been tarnished as a result, but by the time he was given real command he was in a losing situation, dealing with fractured and demoralized forces retreating from Sherman's advance. For the early part of the war he was often hamstrung by political tensions with Jefferson Davis. He kept getting put in bad situations, but overall was not a terrible field commander (in fact, both Sherman and Grant held him in high regard).
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Zinegata »

Given that the secession was hurried and quite urgent, I'm actually willing to give them a pass on the lack of opposition candidates
It was hurried precisely because it was never meant to be democratic, since the Confederates knew that support for their cause was very tenuous at best in many of the areas they claimed to be part of the Confederacy.
The point about the refusal to hold a referendum is an excellent point, on the other hand.
The irony is that one area that did hold a referendum - Tenessee - had an almost landslide vote against secession despite the governor wanting so badly to secede.

They then held a second referendum after Fort Sumter and Lincoln calling for volunteers, which supposedly turned the state around and the second referendum had a massive landslide the other way.

The problem, and this is an issue that had never been truly examined, is that East Tenesee (whose voting patterns were unchanged in the second referendum) claimed that the governor had in fact engaged in a massive campaign of fraud and intimidation in the rest of the state. This resulted in East Tenesee being occupied by Confederate troops, while the Union very easily captured Nashville and the rest of the supposedly pro-Confederacy state and got 30,000 troops in these areas to sign up for the Union army.

So really this whole "the Confederacy was democractic" notion is to me an invention. People just haven't examined the issue of whether or not there really was widespread support for the Confederacy in the areas they supposedly claimed. Really, the fact that New Orleans - the South's largest city which had a population greater than the next two biggest southern cities put together - surrendered without a fight to a handful of gunboats should give pause to any idea that there was any widespread popular appeal for the Confederate cause or that they were subscribing to any notions of democracy.

The die-hard southerners saw themselves as aristocrats, plain and simple. Which also very easily explains why support for the Confederacy in the international arena came almost exclusively from similar aristocratic classes in Britain and not the working masses.

===
Virginia was core Confederate territory. It was one of the largest Confederate states, it contained the capital and was the source of many of the Confederates' most prominent politicians and generals, and it contained many of the Confederacy's limited number of industrial centers and fortifications.
Except a very large chunk of Virginia became West Virginia, and the land between Washington DC and Richmond was not exactly a populous territory. Manassas for instance was just a rail road junction. It contained no great population of pro-Confederate citizens or any plantations.

It became invested in the minds of historians because so many battles were fought there (and consequently it's Virginians who ended up taking a good brunt of the fighting) but aside from Richmond (which was important not because it was the notional capital, but because it had the Tregedar Iron Works) virginia was strategically and economically insignificant.

The heart of the Confederacy was further south - where the actual plantations are. Heck, even Marx at the time accurately predicted that a collapse of the confederacy would come not with the fall of Richmond, but the with the fall of Georgia.
By the time this happened, the Army of Northern Virginia and the army fighting in Tennessee had already been badly attrited in earlier battles, and the Confederate positions on the Mississippi were already being rolled up systematically (unless you're placing the "when the North got leaders..." moment after Vicksburg, in which case they already were rolled up.
Except the battles of the Wilderness were in fact bloodier than most of the early battles of the war - Cold Harbor for instance was worst then either Bull Runs and is only really matched in single-day slaughter by Antietam and Fredricksburg. The North in fact consistently did not get leaders willing to go for attrition. Grant was the first and the Confederacy found itself unable to stop the juggernaut the moment they faced an enemy general no longer willing to show restraint.
Southern generalship was markedly superior in the early years of the war; Confederate troops systematically outmaneuvered Union forces, and did not simply out-fight them. This is very evident in the 1862 campaigns in the Shenandoah and the Peninsula.
Shenandoah is one campaign of very superflous influence, and in any case was fought almost entirely by one general on the southern side who knew the terrain. The Peninsula was ultimately about the south getting outmaneuvered because they never expected a seaborne landing in the first place, and they only defeated the Union army because of McClellan's failure of nerves.

South had "better generals" trope is simply unsupported. At First Bull Run the Union Army in fact managed to cross a significant water obstacle and flanked the Confederate Army that was greater in number, which is "systematic outmaneuvering". If the Union troops hadn't simply crushed the outnumbered Virginians at the hill where Stonewall made his stand, McDowell would be compared to Fredrick the Great at Leuthen instead of being cashiered.

The same applies in fact to most of the Civil War battles. Chancelorsville - Lee's supposedly greatest victory - actually had him attacking a numerically superior Union force under Hooker while his own retreat route had already been captured by Sedgwick (who captured Fredricksburg). If Hooker hadn't broken down and had his troops held, we'd now be talking about a reckless General Lee who got his army surrounded and wiped out.

Really, that people act all surprised that Lee only launched pointless frontal assaults at Gettysburg goes to show how little they actually study the moment-by-moment actions of most Civil War battles in the East. Lee was never that sophisticated of a commander who relied on outmaneuvering as his proponents so claim. What he instead had was a very measured understanding of how his men had general tactical superiority over the enemy, and he constantly gambled on this superiority carrying him to victory. That gambling mentality finally caught up with him - disastrously - at Gettysburg. Afterwards, in the face of a Union general who was never going to suffer a failure of nerves, he was essentially helpless.

Ultimately, I think the best Confederate General in the East was in fact Longstreet, who was the only one who really understood that this gambling was going to catch up with the Confederacy eventually and that the real way to give the enemy a bloody nose was through defensive entrenchments; something which he was ironically criticized of.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Rogue 9 »

I just picked up the book Embattled Rebel by James McPherson last night, about Jefferson Davis' performance as Commander in Chief, a follow on to his excellent Tried by War about Lincoln in the same role. Once I finish reading it I'll probably write another essay and/or revise The War of Southern Aggression (it's already provided some excellent insights and leads to new [to me] primary sources) but one thing it makes clear is that Davis and Joseph Johnston didn't like each other very much, and Johnston was prone to insubordination and changing plans and taking action without informing his superiors. Their antagonistic relationship nearly cost them Richmond a few times in 1862 according to this; I'll have more to say when I finish reading.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by cmdrjones »

And now for the thoughts of the man commonly referred to as the father of our country, George Washington, chairman of the Constitutional Convention and first President. This is from his Circular to the States.
There are four things, which I humbly conceive, are essential to the well being, I may even venture to say, to the existence of the United States as an Independent Power:

1st. An indissoluble Union of the States under one Federal Head.

2dly. A Sacred regard to Public Justice.

3dly. The adoption of a proper Peace Establishment, and

4thly. The prevalence of that pacific and friendly Disposition, among the People of the United States, which will induce them to forget their local prejudices and policies, to make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity, and in some instances, to sacrifice their individual advantages to the interest of the Community.

...

Under the first head, altho' it may not be necessary or proper for me in this place to enter into a particular disquisition of the principles of the Union, and to take up the great question which has been frequently agitated, whether it be expedient and requisite for the States to delegate a larger proportion of Power to Congress, or not, Yet it will be a part of my duty, and that of every true Patriot, to assert without reserve, and to insist upon the following positions, That unless the States will suffer Congress to exercise those prerogatives, they are undoubtedly invested with by the Constitution, every thing must very rapidly tend to Anarchy and confusion, That it is indispensable to the happiness of the individual States, that there should be lodged somewhere, a Supreme Power to regulate and govern the general concerns of the Confederated Republic, without which the Union cannot be of long duration. That there must be a faithful and pointed compliance on the part of every State, with the late proposals and demands of Congress, or the most fatal consequences will ensue, That whatever measures have a tendency to dissolve the Union, or contribute to violate or lessen the Sovereign Authority, ought to be considered as hostile to the Liberty and Independency of America, and the Authors of them treated accordingly, and lastly, that unless we can be enabled by the concurrence of the States, to participate of the fruits of the Revolution, and enjoy the essential benefits of Civil Society, under a form of Government so free and uncorrupted, so happily guarded against the danger of oppression, as has been devised and adopted by the Articles of Confederation, it will be a subject of regret, that so much blood and treasure have been lavished for no purpose, that so many sufferings have been encountered without a compensation, and that so many sacrifices have been made in vain.
Ouch. That one's got to sting, especially since many neo-Confederates actually hold Washington as a hero. There was in fact a portrait of him dominating the front wall of the hall in Montgomery where the Confederate Constitution was drawn up.


I wonder though, if #'s 2, 3, and 4 go by the wayside, how long #1 is even relevant any longer? No nation is going to set up it own laws to allow for an easy dissolution of its own existence. The fact that the United States EXISTS shows that the right to rebel against an UNJUST government cannot be a crime (assuming you win that is, and unjust government by definiton should have no problem killing you). The Confederates obvioulsy did nothing of the sort, hence they lost.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Metahive »

The injustice the confederate traitors fought against was that they didn't have a stranglehold on US politics anymore and their plans to spread slavery to the territories was threatened. Of course, the reason this happened was because they stupidly split the vote between candidates opposing Lincoln, so they didn't have anyone to blame but themselves for it.
So essentially, the traitors were doing a statewide version of "picking up their ball and going home when" when they had just pricked the ball themselves with a nail while also picking a fight with the much bigger kid because stupid.

Why's everything about the CSA so fucking pathetic?
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Ziggy Stardust »

I wonder though, if #'s 2, 3, and 4 go by the wayside, how long #1 is even relevant any longer? No nation is going to set up it own laws to allow for an easy dissolution of its own existence. The fact that the United States EXISTS shows that the right to rebel against an UNJUST government cannot be a crime (assuming you win that is, and unjust government by definiton should have no problem killing you). The Confederates obvioulsy did nothing of the sort, hence they lost.
It's not even clear anymore exactly what you are trying to prove.

Nobody argues that the American revolutionaries were not traitors to the British crown. They were traitors, by definition. But they won the war and the British recognized them as a legitimate government. And this is without even getting into the details of why the Revolution was fought versus the Civil War, and the fact that morally the revolutionaries were on much firmer ground than the Confederate ilk.

It's only the pathetic Confederate apologists like yourself who argue that the Confederates were not traitors. They were, plain and simple.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Captain Seafort »

Ziggy Stardust wrote:morally the revolutionaries were on much firmer ground than the Confederate ilk.
Why? They were both following the principle of "you won't let us get our own way, so we're going to quit and form our own club". The difference is that the Confederacy seceded from a nation that was founded on this principle.
It's only the pathetic Confederate apologists like yourself who argue that the Confederates were not traitors. They were, plain and simple.
Again, why? Again, if anything they were on far firmer ground than the revolutionaries, because they quit before they started shooting at US forces. The militia at Lexington and Concord, on the other hand, were behaving in much the same way as Cliven Bundy's mob.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by cmdrjones »

Metahive wrote:The injustice the confederate traitors fought against was that they didn't have a stranglehold on US politics anymore and their plans to spread slavery to the territories was threatened. Of course, the reason this happened was because they stupidly split the vote between candidates opposing Lincoln, so they didn't have anyone to blame but themselves for it.
So essentially, the traitors were doing a statewide version of "picking up their ball and going home when" when they had just pricked the ball themselves with a nail while also picking a fight with the much bigger kid because stupid.

Why's everything about the CSA so fucking pathetic?

Because they weren't Korean obviously
Terralthra wrote:It's similar to the Arabic word for "one who sows discord" or "one who crushes underfoot". It'd be like if the acronym for the some Tea Party thing was "DKBAG" or something. In one sense, it's just the acronym for ISIL/ISIS in Arabic: Dawlat (al-) Islāmiyya ‘Irāq Shām, but it's also an insult.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by cmdrjones »

Ziggy Stardust wrote:
I wonder though, if #'s 2, 3, and 4 go by the wayside, how long #1 is even relevant any longer? No nation is going to set up it own laws to allow for an easy dissolution of its own existence. The fact that the United States EXISTS shows that the right to rebel against an UNJUST government cannot be a crime (assuming you win that is, and unjust government by definiton should have no problem killing you). The Confederates obvioulsy did nothing of the sort, hence they lost.
It's not even clear anymore exactly what you are trying to prove.

Nobody argues that the American revolutionaries were not traitors to the British crown. They were traitors, by definition. But they won the war and the British recognized them as a legitimate government. And this is without even getting into the details of why the Revolution was fought versus the Civil War, and the fact that morally the revolutionaries were on much firmer ground than the Confederate ilk.

It's only the pathetic Confederate apologists like yourself who argue that the Confederates were not traitors. They were, plain and simple.
Re read my last sentence there Chief
Terralthra wrote:It's similar to the Arabic word for "one who sows discord" or "one who crushes underfoot". It'd be like if the acronym for the some Tea Party thing was "DKBAG" or something. In one sense, it's just the acronym for ISIL/ISIS in Arabic: Dawlat (al-) Islāmiyya ‘Irāq Shām, but it's also an insult.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Channel72 »

Maybe we should stop calling the Confederates "traitors". I mean, they were, obviously ... but who cares? Their treason is not the primary reason that they fucking suck so hard. The reason they suck is because they were a large-scale slave economy whose continued existence meant large-scale suffering and abuse. Calling them "traitors" is not even ... it's like not even worth it, and it distracts from the real issue because it implies their treason alone was some kind of unforgiveable act. A lot of states or provinces have attempted to rebel against some larger sovereignty. Some succeed, some fail. The Maccabees revolted against the Greeks and suceeded, then later their descendants tried the same against Rome and got curbstomped. And countless nations have rebelled against the British crown, including the US, India, many African nations, etc. - that, in itself, is not exactly some kind of morally repugnant thing - usually, it's actually justified. (In fact, the American Revolution was probably the least justified act of Rebellion against Britain, but again, who cares?)

The point is the treason of the CSA is hardly the primary reason that they suck. Treason itself is not necessarily morally reprehensible - but slavery is.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Ziggy Stardust »

Captain Seafort wrote: Why? They were both following the principle of "you won't let us get our own way, so we're going to quit and form our own club".
Because the Confederates ONLY reason for existing was to perpetuate the institution of slavery? Say what you will about the morality of the Founding Fathers (certainly they were not perfect), but the fact that they weren't going to war specifically and solely for the cause of enslaving other people automatically gives them the higher ethical ground.
Captain Seafort wrote: The difference is that the Confederacy seceded from a nation that was founded on this principle.
Yet secession was still illegal. Why do you think that is?
Captain Seafort wrote: Again, why?
Have you not been paying attention to this thread? Or .. you know, any aspect of US history? Under what definition could the Confederates NOT be construed as traitors?
Captain Seafort wrote: Again, if anything they were on far firmer ground than the revolutionaries, because they quit before they started shooting at US forces.
(looks at Fort Sumter)

Um ... yeah ... about that...
Channel72 wrote:Maybe we should stop calling the Confederates "traitors". I mean, they were, obviously ... but who cares? Their treason is not the primary reason that they fucking suck so hard. The reason they suck is because they were a large-scale slave economy whose continued existence meant large-scale suffering and abuse. Calling them "traitors" is not even ... it's like not even worth it, and it distracts from the real issue because it implies their treason alone was some kind of unforgiveable act. A lot of states or provinces have attempted to rebel against some larger sovereignty. Some succeed, some fail. The Maccabees revolted against the Greeks and suceeded, then later their descendants tried the same against Rome and got curbstomped. And countless nations have rebelled against the British crown, including the US, India, many African nations, etc. - that, in itself, is not exactly some kind of morally repugnant thing - usually, it's actually justified. (In fact, the American Revolution was probably the least justified act of Rebellion against Britain, but again, who cares?)

The point is the treason of the CSA is hardly the primary reason that they suck. Treason itself is not necessarily morally reprehensible - but slavery is.
The only reason it keeps coming up because of apologists explicitly trying to paint the Confederates as true patriots. It's part of the whole state's rights myth, and the whole lie about them having the legal right of secession. You are right that reason in and of itself is not important at all (it's arbitrary, after all). But the fact that morons continuously try to refute the idea that they were traitors ... just look at Captain Seafort taking such umbrage with it just now.
Last edited by Ziggy Stardust on 2015-09-05 06:40pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by cmdrjones »

Channel72 wrote:Maybe we should stop calling the Confederates "traitors". I mean, they were, obviously ... but who cares? Their treason is not the primary reason that they fucking suck so hard. The reason they suck is because they were a large-scale slave economy whose continued existence meant large-scale suffering and abuse. Calling them "traitors" is not even ... it's like not even worth it, and it distracts from the real issue because it implies their treason alone was some kind of unforgiveable act. A lot of states or provinces have attempted to rebel against some larger sovereignty. Some succeed, some fail. The Maccabees revolted against the Greeks and suceeded, then later their descendants tried the same against Rome and got curbstomped. And countless nations have rebelled against the British crown, including the US, India, many African nations, etc. - that, in itself, is not exactly some kind of morally repugnant thing - usually, it's actually justified. (In fact, the American Revolution was probably the least justified act of Rebellion against Britain, but again, who cares?)

The point is the treason of the CSA is hardly the primary reason that they suck. Treason itself is not necessarily morally reprehensible - but slavery is.
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Terralthra wrote:It's similar to the Arabic word for "one who sows discord" or "one who crushes underfoot". It'd be like if the acronym for the some Tea Party thing was "DKBAG" or something. In one sense, it's just the acronym for ISIL/ISIS in Arabic: Dawlat (al-) Islāmiyya ‘Irāq Shām, but it's also an insult.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by cmdrjones »

Ziggy Stardust wrote:
Captain Seafort wrote: Again, if anything they were on far firmer ground than the revolutionaries, because they quit before they started shooting at US forces.
(looks at Fort Sumter)

Um ... yeah ... about that

WHo is the one at fault, the party that initiates violence or the one that makes violence inevitable?
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Simon_Jester »

Thing is, to commit treason because your people are abused or oppressed is a different thing than to commit treason because you fear your people may be forced to stop practicing slavery.

The colonists of the American Revolution were fighting to protect their right to some practices that were questionable- chief among them being smuggling. But they had some legitimate grievances- violence by British garrisons, the fact that they had no actual legal representation in a Parliament that was now starting to assume more of its legal control over the colonies' economy, and so on.

Meanwhile, the Confederates were fighting to protect their right to an intensely, brutally evil practice. And aside from the defense of that practice, they had no real motive for rebelling. The federal government had done a great deal of good for the South, had in past decades gone well out of its way to protect slavery (i.e. from inhabitants of free states who might otherwise help escaped slaves). There was no history of abuses, no routine bullying of a minority by a majority, none of the normal things that would normally justify kicking off a civil war.*

So it is a foolish joke for the Confederates to say violence had "been made inevitable." Especially to say that just because the federal government did not just quietly acquiesce in the seizure of federal property and the violation of federal laws, when previously said federal government had been very kind and supportive of the states that were now doing the seizing and the violating.

A mugger cannot claim that violence was "made inevitable" by your refusal to hand over your wallet without a fight.
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Or rather, there was, but the only justified secession would have been the black slaves seceding collectively from the southern states, stealing all the weapons in the state armories, and forming their own private enclaves. Which would have been a delightful taste of the Confederacy's own medicine if you ask me. I wonder if any southern state would have been as calm about that as the Buchanan administration was about the Confederate states' seceding, or whether they would have taken more of a Lincoln-esque response of 'saving the unity' of their own states...
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Metahive »

Simon Jester wrote:Meanwhile, the Confederates were fighting to protect their right to an intensely, brutally evil practice.
Slavery wasn't even threatened where it existed, Lincoln promised to keep it intact there. What was threatened was the spread of it to the newly claimed territories which Lincoln had campaigned against. So yeah, as I said, it's just so fucking pathetic.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Metahive »

Missed the editing window, bleh.

Forgot to add that secession wasn't even an unanimous decision, they did have to resort to stuffing the ballots, supressing dissenters and in Texas' case even staged an outright coup to gain control.
That's why West Virginia almost immediately seceded right back to the US. I would also like to point out here that Lincoln won the presidency despite not even being on the ballot in many southern states. So, the South was in fact sabotaging and disregarding democracy wherever it could. They were also all too happy to violate the sovereignty of other states if it suited them like with the Fugitive Slave Act. So hypocrisy can be piled on top of it all.

So, confederate admirers, what exactly is there to be proud of in the CSA? Lee's and the Army of Northern Virginia's performance? Gotta' point out that Lee drawing out the war that he couldn't win led to the devastations that was wrought on Virginia and on the states Sherman marched through. Gotta' also point out that during the war the individual states kept their childish bickering and jealous hoarding of resources up.

Really, the CSA was an abysmal failure from the beginning to the end.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Captain Seafort »

Ziggy Stardust wrote:Say what you will about the morality of the Founding Fathers (certainly they were not perfect), but the fact that they weren't going to war specifically and solely for the cause of enslaving other people automatically gives them the higher ethical ground.
Not at all. Not only was Great Britain not founded on the principle of quitting if you don't get your own way, the colonies had been murdering British soldiers for over a year before they got around to declaring independence. Moreover, the root causes of their rebellion included tax evasion, slavery (just like the Confederacy, given Britain's gradual but clear move towards abolitionism in the late 18th century, just as the US was in the mid 19th century), western expansion into native territory (blocking it doesn't help those that had already been driven out or wiped out, but better late than never), smuggling, and I've probably forgotten a few. At least the Confederate constitution was honest about being about slavery, rather than the original's weasel words around "others" being worth 3/5ths.
Yet secession was still illegal. Why do you think that is?
Simple - once they got their own way, they suddenly found themselves looking at the issue from the other side, and found themselves agreeing with the British government's view. Unfortunately for Lincoln, they'd already repeatedly endorsed the view that "if you don't get your own way then quit, regardless of what the law says" constitutes the moral high ground. You can't get the genie back in the bottle.
Have you not been paying attention to this thread? Or .. you know, any aspect of US history? Under what definition could the Confederates NOT be construed as traitors?
Because everything they did was in accord with the fundamental principles of the rebels during the War of Independence.
(looks at Fort Sumter)

Um ... yeah ... about that...
South Carolina seceded on 20 December 1860, the CSA was formed on 4 February 1861, and the constitution was adopted on 11 March. Fort Sumter was attacked on 12 April 1861. Ergo, it was an act of war by one sovereign state (in the international, rather than domestic US sense of the word) against another, rather than a bunch of crooks opening fire on local law enforcement in the performance of their duties.
But the fact that morons continuously try to refute the idea that they were traitors ... just look at Captain Seafort taking such umbrage with it just now.
I'm taking umbrage at it because the idea of labelling people as traitors to a country for applying the very principles on which that country was founded is utter lunacy.
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Captain Seafort »

Simon_Jester wrote:Meanwhile, the Confederates were fighting to protect their right to an intensely, brutally evil practice.
Indeed - they were scum. That doesn't mean that the US had a leg to stand on when it came to objecting to their secession, given that they'd already let the genie out of the bottle when it came to the principle of "don't like it, so quit".
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Re: The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War, 2nd Editio

Post by Simon_Jester »

Metahive wrote:
Simon Jester wrote:Meanwhile, the Confederates were fighting to protect their right to an intensely, brutally evil practice.
Slavery wasn't even threatened where it existed, Lincoln promised to keep it intact there. What was threatened was the spread of it to the newly claimed territories which Lincoln had campaigned against. So yeah, as I said, it's just so fucking pathetic.
For one, they were protecting their 'right' to unlimited practice of slavery, not the slavery itself. Arguably worse and more pathetic, as you say.

Also, I will note that plantation cotton agriculture tended to ruin the land after a few generations. There were large parts of the American South where one of the main things that allowed plantation owners to stay in business was the practice of 'selling south' their slaves (or the descendants of the slaves they'd originally bought) to new plantations on new soil. Therefore, if slavery stopped expanding it would also become unprofitable even in places it was already practiced.

Again... even worse and more pathetic than it looks at first glance...
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