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http://www.civil-war.net/pages/mississip…
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth."
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national…
That would be great and all, if it wasn't for the fact that they were fighting for their "independence" to keep slaves. You can argue till your blue in the face that the North was trying to instill their doctrine onto the south, and that there were other economic venues at the time, but considering the main economic powerhouse of the South was Slaves, and the South wanted slaves, it shouldn't be any surprise that the war was fought about...slaves.
Sure, they can re-frame it as a glorious fight for independence and the right to keep there jobs, but when your "jobs" means "slaveholders", the picture of who should be vilified goes right back to where its always been.
Germany, the losing power after WW I and II, has every incentive to share those feelings of shame and regret (sanctioned economic shame and regret, actually, by the victors). Had the third reich triumphed, regret and shame wouldn't enter into the picture in its national sentiment; therefore, the zeitgeist mentioned has nothing at all to do with honestly appraising history and any sincere accountability.
1) There are the slavers, people who really do understand what it was all about and think that it was good. There are still people down here who think black folks are indeed less than human and would enslave them again if they could. These days, it's a tiny, tiny minority that have the balls to suffer the consequences of expressing this opinion in public.
2) Then there are the apologists, folks who claim either that the Civil War was about freedom and independence in general, and that the freedom to own slaves as an independent sovereign person was of secondary or even tertiary importance. It's unclear how many of these folks are actually type 1s with the good sense to keep their mouths shut.
3) Then there the scalawags--folks who know that the Condeferacy was as thoroughly and utterly wrong as were the Nazis. Most of these folks, like the most of the slavers, content to let most of the type 2s think they're with them. They just quietly work for gradual change. Type 3s like me, who are willing to publicly argue the point, are a tiny tiny minority.
But we're growing. The other two groups are shrinking. The youngest people who actually got to know Civil War veterans are approaching 80. Their kids are all aging. The change is coming frustratingly, maddeningly slowly, but it will come.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Conte…
Fuck 'em. Totally.
Unfortunately, the Civil War has left this mindset in many people that lingers together. For example, when Southern white politicians like Huckabee ever mentions the words "State rights", I always question what he means by that. I'm always thinking "well does he want to go back to the old slave days" where land owners in those states had the rights to own slaves and treat them like cattle?
So Goldy, you are right to assume that some Southerners take pride in their Civil War historical ties. But not all do. You should be looking for the white aristocracies in the South who truly take pride of being related to slave owners as well as look for the white trash that pride themselves in being related to Robert E Lee.
I don't think it's unreasonable to label the Reconstruction a success, considering we didn't have a second civil war 20 years after the first.
(m g !)
Imagine if the reich had triumped...then any shame and apology for the holocaust would amount to the powerless hippie liberal moonbeams who feel all bad about what happened to the native americans in this country or the multicult's vacuous and meaningless "mea culpa" about western imperialism and colonialism. Chai lattes and boohoohoo, western civ is evil.
(m 2u2, n 2u2 nafun u mn ol mn !)
(s i nofun!)
I did not generalize. I wrote "many Southerners." Not "all" or even "most." (Though I'm guessing "most" would probably prove accurate as well.)
This is a good discussion. Pretty civil by SLOG standards.
Lots to quibble with. But in a nutshell, my understanding is that the comparison between the Confederacy and National Socialist Germany is weak.The former wanted secession to preserve "state rights" one of them the "peculiar institution" of slavery. The Confederacy also wanted to expand slavery to the Territories and had been threatening secession or even war since prior to the Missouri Compromise of 1850. The recently elected Republican in 1860, Abraham Lincoln and other Northerners merely wanted to quash the Rebellion. They believed at least in a Federal Union. The Confederacy was essentially committing treason by waging war against the Republic (Union). Yes, Lincoln freed the slaves but held African-Americans to be inferior to whites, a common sentiment in ALL sectors of the USA circa the 1860s.
On the other hand, Germany was bogged down by a crippling war debt, inflation and other mostly territorial restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. Imperial Germany, her allies and enemies (UK, France, Czarist Russia etc.) had just fought a bloody, devastating war which essentially ended in stalemate. It took a charismatic veteran of WWI, Adolph Hitler to stir the German people into a frenzy of discipline and honor. Capitalizing on an old and vile prejudice antisemitism, he rallied the country from the destitution of post-WWI and improved its lot. He also tore up the Treaty of Versailles and instituted racial laws (restrictions against Jews and Slavs). Eventually, the Nazi Party and it's minions of which Hitler was leader (Fuhrer) targeted Jews, gypsies, Slavs and homosexuals for eventual extermination.
Both ends, a viable Confederacy that allowed slavery and a victorious National Socialist Germany would have been terrible for human history. Comparing them is one tough and probably impossible slog (excuse the pun).
Personally, I don't know of any defenders of old Dixie. There are proud Southerners black, white and everything in between. A new South is rising. I read of a recent trend of northern blacks relocating to the south. I find that pleasant to hear given the South's racist past. I also find discussion such as this far more important than reenactments of Civil War battles. We learn far more.
but turns out he primarily wanted to restore the union. freeing slaves wasn't his top priority. in fact, many northerners wouldn't have volunteered for the army had the war been about slavery. the irish, scots and germans in large metropolitan cities all feared that freed slaves would come north and take their jobs. not that they held african americans in high regards in the first place.
but, hey, your high school textbook said that the war was about slavery so why bother to learn any more about it than that?
My post isn't about the North's motivations and intentions, it's about how modern Southerners celebrate, excuse and mythologize the Civil War era South's.
And yes, the historical circumstances surrounding the Civil War were complex and nuanced, but the preservation and expansion of slavery was clearly the primary motivation for secession, and thus the primary cause of the war.
The North's response to the Southern rebellion was to restore the Union. In that you are correct, however, you're an idiot because you leave out the REASON for the Southern rebellion. As South Carolina and Mississippi listed chiefly when they voted to rebel, SLAVERY.
The South rebelled under their understanding that the Northern States were no longer respecting the Southern States in regards to the slavery issue. They even listed New York's resistance to Slave Owners bringing their slaves on vacations to NY as one of the reasons for rebelling.
Now to paraphrase:
but, hey, your Public College's History 101 course said that the war was about nuanced and complex so why bother to learn any more about it than just the word nuanced and complex?
Seriously, if you consider yourself intelligent you need to rethink this whole, "knowledge" business.
I'm not saying that the South doesn't have an unhealthy attachment to its history, but Southerners aren't the only ones that are guilty of glorifying it. And to be fair, what exactly is the difference, morally speaking, of the enslavement in the South and the virtual enslavement of the working class in the North.
A very small percentage of landowners, not even all Southerners- landowners had slaves prior to the emancipation. We're talking about the top 2% of the population. Know your facts. All Southerners are not inherently racist. It's a product of the system. Once slavery was illegal, poor white people had more competition for jobs. That is not a problem that is specific to the South's history. I know we all know about violence against immigrants in the North, yes?
The North did not sweep in and rescue all the slaves in the Civil War. If it were really all about that, it wouldn't have been a hundred years later and after years of protesting and lost lives that the U.S. government would actually start enforcing equal rights laws.
It's disparaging comments like many above that perpetuate Southern otherness in this nation, and which foments antipathy toward other regions here for some people. Flying a confederate flag for many is the only way that many feel they can express pride in their Southernness. I personally find the flag offensive and wildly unhelpful in improving things, but I understand that the portion of those who bear it who would actually own a slave themselves if given the opportunity is low.
The recent poll numbers from Mississippi are surprising to me in some ways. Perhaps I do not travel enough in the spaces those people inhabit to understand the extent of remaining racism, but that in itself proves a point. You can live, work, and play in the South without really being exposed to the overt hatred that is assumed to be endemic in the region. It's still there and it needs to be addressed, but solving education and economic problems in the South would go the farthest in achieving that end.
Calling us fat and stupid does nothing to advance that cause.
The South started the war and for the South, slavery was the cause they were willing to die for. Owning other human beings was their 'American Dream'. The Cornerstone Address is pretty clear about that.
Lincoln wasn't even president when the South seceded, so his early attempts to maintain the Union in the face of treason while trying to avoid outright conflict aren't really pertinent to why the South broke away. Even he recognized that slavery was the reason for the war. (http://www.ourdocuments.gov/print_friend…)
@42 wow.
Oh please. Every Southern state has its own flag. Fly that. No, the use of the Confederate flag has its own meaning and purpose and we all know that.
That the South needs to tread lightly at the 150 year anniversary is true. My read is that most of them will screw it up in the name of "our beloved ancestors."
Lincoln should have let them all go. (And I say this as someone with Southern roots on both sides of my family.)
Again, this isn't about the North. Northerners don't fetishize the Civil War to the degree Southerners do. And even if they did, they wouldn't have nearly as much to be ashamed of. The South fought for a bad cause, simple as that, and I don't see how one proudly makes this a part of one's cultural identity.
And fuck... we're talking about a century and a half ago. So I don't particularly feel the need to be culturally sensitive on this.
The current dreamy nostalgia for the Confederacy overlooks the spectacular viciousness of the southern troops; look up the Fort Pillow massacre if you want to know the truth behind the southern lie that they really had the best interests of their slaves at heart. Even saintly Robert E. Lee used to send captured black soldiers, and any other overrun black persons encountered in his campaigns, back to be enslaved or re-enslaved, regardless of where they were actually from.
Another thing to realize about the slave economy is that it continued to operate with impunity up until the 1940s and 1950s, under the guise of the prison system. Black men were picked up off the street for "vagrancy", even outside (or inside) their homes, whenever new influxes of forced labor were needed on the plantations or, increasingly, in the new industrial south, in the mines and smelters, and the prisoners convicted in absentia while they were already on their way to their new forced labor camps. The only way you could be exonerated was if you could prove that you were already owned by another landowner. I repeat: NINETEEN FIFTIES.
The current fad for Confederate nostalgia, of course, has almost nothing whatever to do with the Confederacy or Civil War, and everything to do with the Civil Rights movement of the NINETEEN 50s and 60s. Before then, nobody in the south ever displayed the stars 'n' bars. That flag went up on the state flags of Georgia and Mississippi in the 1950s, not the 1860s. That flag is a proud symbol not of devotion to the world of slavery but to the world of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever". It is an explicit symbol of opposition to freedom and human rights, period.
The way many Seattleites seem happy to generalize Southerners (fully 78,000,000 people) as unevolved, neo-Confederate cretins is appalling. Southerners (even the flag-waving variety) are NOT glorifying slavery when they celebrate their history, any more than tourists who visit the Egyptian Pyramids or the Roman Colosseum are glorifying the slaves that built them. Or, anymore than the present-day Seattleite wishes to glorify the exploitation of millions of workers in Southeast Asia who make damn near everything we use at starvation wages. As a lifelong Georgian who recently transplanted to Seattle, I feel the need to say: this is disgusting.
The way many Seattleites seem happy to generalize Southerners (fully 78,000,000 people) as unevolved, neo-Confederate cretins is appalling. Southerners (even the flag-waving variety) are NOT glorifying slavery when they celebrate their history, any more than tourists who visit the Egyptian Pyramids or the Roman Collosium are glorifying the slaves that built them. Or, anymore than the present-day Seattleite wishes to glorify the exploitation of millions of workers in Southeast Asia who make damn near everything we use at starvation wages.
Playing the Nazi card? Really?
People don't fly the confederate flag because they want slavery back or because they glorify it. Nor do I think Germans are superior because they feel bad about WW2.
Flying the confederate flag is about nationalism. It's about identity tied up with politics and sense of community. Being Republican and loving football and eating fried chicken and going hunting and it's all the same thing and that flag represents it all.
It's about feeling this sense of constantly being attacked by the North. They still see the North as the enemy. This is, of course, imagined but it doesn't help that you guys constantly talk about what fat idiots we are. They don't believe you when you tell them to get rid of the flag because it represents slavery. They think you hate the flag because you hate the south.
Germans are superior because they know how dangerous nationalism really is. They learned that lesson from WW2 and are careful not to let it happen again. They criticize any behavior they see as nationalism. Disallowing the nazi symbol is nowhere near as important as how careful they are about nationalism.
The south is the most nationalist place I've ever lived. That's what that flag is about. That's what is wrong with flying it, to me. That is what is scary about it. Nationalism is so dangerous to me and the South is rife with it.
If I could change one thing about my home, it would be that.
If it'll help, I'll say it. Slavery is evil. The Southern States can not defend our part in the Civil War even if slavery had been a tiny part of what we'd been fighting for. Our position then is indefensible.
Please, tell me this doesn't exist:
http://twitter.com/hipsterhitler
One thing that I didn't see mention yet is the weird ancestor/fore-father worship. How streets, schools, and buildings are named for generals and politicians that were on the front lines of a rebellion and were the staunchest supporters of slavery and (if they survived) Jim Crow and segregation. You'll find enough Jefferson Davis and Calhoun towns, schools, monuments in the south to choke a wide-necked animal. You'll be hard pressed to find the same sort of praise publicly laid on Rommel, Goering, and all the rest of the the NSDAP leadership.
Actually makes the South look worse, rather than better. You're right: The North didn't care that much about slavery. But the South was so invested in slavery that the very idea that the North was not for it, and pushed back against new slave states, etc., meant that it was worth breaking up the entire country. The South went to war to "save slavery" even though no one was (at that moment) even trying to take it away from them. So, evil, *and* delusional.
If that's not the best endorsement for liberalism I've ever heard, I don't know what is.
The conservative southern mindset has not evolved since the mid 1800's. It has always been an overt rationalization of superiority based on Calvinism, race and American exceptionalism. I have met people in the south who fly the flag, and they are uniformly revolutionary, and they have all, when they felt comfortable doing so, expressed to me their desire to see a rise in militia movements and violence aimed towards minorities and pesky liberals.
They are the problem with modern day America, as surely as they were the problem with America in the 1860's.
The rest of America would be much better off if they were not a part of the union.
The Cotton Gin was a huge and heavy piece of stationary equipment for processing picked cotton bolls, and the industrial revolution hadn't yet devised a cheaper-than-slaves way to plant and pick cotton in the field. And even if such machinery had existed, the banks (all in the north) wouldn't have provided the captial for the Southerners to buy the equipment until the cost:benefit and risk profiles improved. That might have happened by 1900 --- or maybe not.
Problem?
Might as well. SLOG Happy in Seattle seems to be dead. :(
When we celebrate that part of our heritage, that's exactly what we are doing. We don't need to be ashamed for the mistakes of our great-great grandparents, but at the same time, we should not glorify their bullshit either. The Confederate Flag, especially the car rooftop pained St Andrew's Crossed battle ensign, belongs in museums, not on t-shirts, and definitely not on the Statehouse grounds.
At the same time, I also say that going the way of Germany, outlawing display of the gray, is fundamentally un-American. Plus, it's a great way for the rest of us to know who our enemies are.
@43 proves they're getting crushed under the wheels of history. I got my head fucked around with by the type 2s. They're slowly being banished from the schools.
Remember that, those hatin' on the South. We've got a governor down here who'd have had to ride in the back of the bus back fifty years ago. We are making progress.
Plus, we gave you Faulkner. We gave you O'Conner's Wise Blood.
Further, the argument that the Civil War was about "economics" can just as easily be applied to WWII, or any war.
At the end of the day, the Confederate Flag is as much a symbol of an enemy nation as the Nazi flag. The entire nation should shame it for what it is.
So come on up southerners, Seattle and Portland are the new Urbanist Whitopias.
In that sense, Goldy's right, because there's absolutely no reason for current Southerners, none of whom were alive during the Confederacy, to be flying the obsolete flag of revolutionaries unless they revere what those revolutionaries stood for, which was the continuation of slavery as an economic system.l
That doesn't make it better. But your "history" is fake.
East Germany did not go through any such period of reconciliation, and is something of a hotbed for neo-Nazis, as is most of the rest of the countries that were behind the Iron Curtain.
If the South has a large number of residents who, either directly or indirectly, celebrate slavery and white supremacy, it's because they, like the East Germans, were never made to confront the truth of their history. In that respect, they aren't any different from any people with a bloody past.
you had your chance, assholes.
now you're stuck with us....
(turn it up...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzbdY_rPt…
our daily dose of
Sanctimonious Liberal Bigotry and Self-Righteousness....
because, of course,
ALL Southerners glorify slavery;
and NO Germans are sympathetic to the Nazis.
Life is so simple
when you see the world through narrow blinders....
Read the United States Constitution and see what it has to say about "the institution of negro slavery."
Why can't they be enlighten like the Germans and make it illegal to sympathise with Confederate views?
Don't they realize that censorship and thought control are hallmarks of an advanced society?
The two most liberal cities in the USA, Seattle and Portland, are also the two whitest cities in the USA.
What an amazing coincidence.
With that said, this is among the most ridiculous things Goldy has posted here.
Alexander Stephens, whose speech was not law, but who was not shouted off the stage:
So, the people I met who had a confederate flag whose reasons I could query were intelligent people who were seeking higher education. It's entirely possible that this was not a representative sample population. Also that they may have been withholding the racist elements of their argument in an attempt to make it palatable.
The racism in the south is really really real. You're right about that. I worked at LIGO in Livingston and a black Engineer quit because he just didn't want to live there. That's a really cool job for an engineer to get. You don't walk away from a job like that without a compelling reason. And that guy just walked away. Not a one of us blamed him.
Yes, Seattle is pretty white. And yes, Seattle had Jim Crow laws, too, just like the south, if not always quite so explicit. There were never "colored" drinking fountains here, but mostly because in the colored drinking fountain era there were almost no black people here. But housing was absolutely restricted.
In California interracial marriage was illegal until 1948 (and, interestingly, Mexican-Americans were classed as "white" under the law), while Oregon tossed their law three years later (Washington threw out its miscegenation law almost a hundred years earlier, in 1868). California's full integration of public facilities including housing didn't come about until 1970.
No one is arguing that racism, including specifically anti-black Jim Crow laws were or are unique to the South. The difference is, in other places these laws were removed a long time ago, and are now regarded as repellent by almost all citizens. In the South, they had to be removed forcibly, sometimes by US troops, and they are recalled fondly, every single day, but millions of ordinary white Southerners. That's what the Confederate flag is about: nostalgia for ssegregation. The "Northern Agression" people refer to is the forced integration of public facilities by federal agents, including troops in a few cases.
This is the difference. Not the civil war, but the civil rights movement. When you show the Confederate flag you are celebrating segregation. The northern and western states confronted their past, and rejected Jim Crow. The south is still nostalgic for it.
The only half assed defence I can come up with for the South's
unapologetic attitude relative to Germany is this:
The Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews completely and to enslave all non-Aryans.
The Southerners enslaved and segregated people of color,
but never tried to exterminate them
(why would you kill the goose that lays the golden egg?),
and never tried to extend slavery to all non-Southerners.
Both are bad, but the Nazis were worse -
slavery was evil,
but not evil on the level of a genocidal regime
on a quest for world domination.