Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

War Crimes Against Southern Civilians
http://www.amazon.com ^ | April 30, 2007 | Walter Cisco

Posted on 08/28/2013 8:03:18 PM PDT by NKP_Vet

This is the untold story of the Union's "hard war" against the people of the Confederacy. Styled the "Black Flag" campaign, it was agreed to by Lincoln in a council with his generals in 1864. Cisco reveals the shelling and burning of cities, systematic destruction of entire districts, mass arrests, forced expulsions, wholesale plundering of personal property, and even murder of civilians. Carefully researched largely from primary sources, this examination also gives full attention to the suffering of Black victims of Federal brutality.

(Excerpt) Read more at amazon.com ...


TOPICS: Books/Literature; History
KEYWORDS: civilwar; confederacy; dixie; fortpillowmassacre; kkk; klan; ntsa; quantrillsraiders; sourcetitlenoturl; whitesupremacists
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 141-160161-180181-200 ... 221-236 next last
To: BroJoeK
I do think there was a disconnect between the Confederate government and the average non slave owning population. Both wanted their independence from DC, but for different reasons. The Aristocracy never realized until it was too late that the slavery issue was a convenient rallying call to Southerners which view the alliance with the North as plain sickening. Both wanted secession but for different reasons. This is what 21 century Neo Unionists failed to realize and can never understand. Places you in the same category and mindset as the 19th century slave owning Aristocracy.

This is why non slave owing officers an enlisted had no problem with Confederate Emancipation, their will to fight would not have been dampened one bit if this had happened. I think this was never understood by the Confederate leadership.

161 posted on 08/31/2013 5:23:15 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 160 | View Replies]

To: BroJoeK
Slavery in Pennsylvania, for example, did not fully end until 1847.

In 1860 New Jersey still had 18 slaves, though redefined as "apprentices for life." This was due to the peculiarities of the various emancipation laws passed over the course of the 19th century.

http://americaninstituteforhistory.org/presenters/Singer/Slavery.pdf

If any of them were still alive and not emancipated during the War, NJ joins DE and KY as the only states where slaves were actually freed by 13A in 1865.

162 posted on 08/31/2013 5:25:09 AM PDT by Sherman Logan ( (optional, printed after your name on post))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 160 | View Replies]

A little late, but . . .


             

163 posted on 08/31/2013 5:28:14 AM PDT by tomkat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: central_va
This is why non slave owing officers an enlisted had no problem with Confederate Emancipation, their will to fight would not have been dampened one bit if this had happened. I think this was never understood by the Confederate leadership.

Possible, though never tested, since Davis squashed and hushed up the only proposition of this type made by an army officer.

As you probably know, this was by Patrick Cleburne, one of the very best southern officers. Despite his competence and the desperate need of the CSA for high level officers, his career stalled after this incident. He died at Franklin.

It was reported that even the officers of the Army of the Tennessee did not support him in his proposition. The CSA Congress, as late as early 1865, when presumably even the most stupid congressmen were aware the situation was critical, had a great deal of difficulty bringing itself to emancipate even slaves recruited as soldiers.

I have long believed that if the CSA had really wanted independence as their primary goal, they could easily have had it. Emancipate the slaves in 1861,or even schedule very gradual emancipation, and Britain and France would have been delighted to recognize the South's independence and resume trade. If the US Navy attempted to interfere, the RN would have promptly sunk it, the US Navy being greatly inferior.

The problem was that this seemingly obvious solution was quite literally unthinkable to southern leaders. The reason they wanted independence was to protect and eventually expand the institution of slavery, so independence without slavery was meaningless and inconceivable.

It is possible you are right about the "common men" of the South, but it is well-documented that the more slaves a man owned in 1860/61, the more likely he was to favor secession. The ordinary men of the South fought primarily not to defend or expand slavery, as their betters did, but, quite justifiably, to repel an invasion of their home.

That invasion, of course, was precipitated by secession, which was initiated by and in the interests of wealthy slaveowners. No slavery, no secession, no invasion, no war.

164 posted on 08/31/2013 5:44:00 AM PDT by Sherman Logan ( (optional, printed after your name on post))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 161 | View Replies]

To: Sherman Logan

You refuse to see. I cannot offer help you, you are trapped in a loop of reconstructed lies and misinformation.


165 posted on 08/31/2013 5:46:47 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 164 | View Replies]

To: BroJoeK
So, where Thomas Jefferson saw slavery as an evil to be abolished, eventually, Jefferson Davis saw it as a positive good to be defended with lives of hundreds of thousands of fellow Southerners.

Not just defended, expanded. Of course, the dominant southern ideology of the 1850s saw no distinction between the two.

One of the areas of agreement between Fire-Eaters and moderate non-abolitionist Republicans like Lincoln was that both sides believed the institution was like a shark. It had to keep moving ahead or die.

AFAIK, this unproven assumption was never really challenged. The Democratic Party split, ending any hope of stopping the Republicans, over northern Democrats refusal to bow to southern demands they insert a pledge to abandon popular sovereignty in the territories and impose it on the inhabitants whether they wanted it or not via a Federal Slave Code enforced by federal troops. (It is interesting that the last national institution, the Democratic Party, split over southern demands that the power of the Federal Government be expanded.)

Whether slavery had to expand or die was true or not, all southern leaders certainly believed it. Which led to some obvious difficulties for them. Expansion into the remaining territories was a symbolic issue, as none had the climate that would allow slavery to thrive, at least slavery of the type southerners were familiar with.

So we are supposed to assume that southerners, had they been allowed to depart peacefully in 1860/61, would have been content to remain in their existing boundaries, and peacefully watch their beloved institution gradually wither and die.

They wouldn't, of course. They would have promptly attempted to move South and conquer new territory in Latin America.

This would most certainly not have worked, since the only way to attack these areas, given the tech of the time, was via the sea. And the Royal Navy (not to mention the US Navy) would never have allowed conquests in the interests of slavery. That such expansion was possible was a peculiar delusion widely shared in the 1850s South.

166 posted on 08/31/2013 6:11:46 AM PDT by Sherman Logan ( (optional, printed after your name on post))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 160 | View Replies]

To: Sherman Logan
"Whether slavery had to expand or die was true or not, all southern leaders certainly believed it."

Wasn't their concern that if free states continued to be added to the United States, but slave states were not, then it was only a matter of time until the free states had the legislative numbers in Congress to outlaw slavery?

167 posted on 08/31/2013 6:20:16 AM PDT by Flag_This (Term limits.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 166 | View Replies]

To: central_va; rockrr
central_va: "Southerners which view the alliance with the North as plain sickening."

Regardless of how some Southerners feeeeeeeeelt about it, the Constitution is not an "alliance".
It's a Federal Republic, a "compact" among "we the people" of the United States, who in 1788 formed "a more perfect union".
It was not intended to be treated as a gentlemen's club that one might join or leave "at pleasure".
Serious "oppressions" or "injuries" were required to justify secession.

And before Fort Sumter, the vast majority of Virginians believed no such conditions existed, and so they refused to vote for secession.
After Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops to suppress rebellion, Virginians instantly changed their minds and voted for secession.

Indeed, by the time of Virginia's voter referendum on May 23, 1861 (3 to 1 for secession), the Confederacy had already formally declared war on the United States, and so Virginians with one vote accomplished three separate actions:

  1. They voted to secede from the United States.

  2. They voted to join the Confederate States.

  3. They voted to join the Confederacy's declared war on the United States.

And all this happened before a single Confederate soldier had been killed in battle with any Union force.

168 posted on 08/31/2013 6:39:22 AM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 161 | View Replies]

To: Flag_This
Wasn't their concern that if free states continued to be added to the United States, but slave states were not, then it was only a matter of time until the free states had the legislative numbers in Congress to outlaw slavery?

Amendment required. So the 14 slaves states existing in 1860 would be enough even at the present day to prevent ratification.

I don't think any sane southerners in 1860 seriously believed slavery in the states was immediately threatened. I believe they were just sick and disgusted, not unreasonably, with sharing a nation with people who constantly told them the basic institution on which their society was based was evil.

The problem, of course, is that it was evil.

169 posted on 08/31/2013 7:56:51 AM PDT by Sherman Logan ( (optional, printed after your name on post))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 167 | View Replies]

To: BroJoeK
But between the time of Thomas Jefferson and, say, Jefferson Davis, there was a major change in attitude in the South, caused by economic realities and a pro-slavery ideology developed to justify them.

That's true. In addition, in a parasitic relationship, the parasite tends to become more (and never less) dependent with each generation. Look at what has happened here since the New Deal and the Great Society.

Ultimately, the parasite becomes so crippled by dependency that the relationship can only be terminated by either a rejection by the host (a slave revolt) or by force applied from an external source (the Union). The parasite becomes too weak and dependent to ever initiate the change on its own.

Slaveholders depended upon the machinery of government to preserve their status as parasites. When it became clear to them that the government in Washington was slowly withdrawing support for their lifestyle, they became increasingly dependent upon state governments for protection.

Nowadays, the parasites are dependent upon the government in Washington to preserve their lifestyle and this time the parasites are more frightened by attempts by state governments to free them from their culture of dependency. Now as then, the parasites become weaker, more dependent and less capable with each new generation. Dependency is never a pretty picture.

The more things change, . . .

170 posted on 08/31/2013 8:07:18 AM PDT by Tau Food (Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 160 | View Replies]

To: Pelham
"Good grief.. you really are a product of the public education system, aren't you?

This has nothing to do with the argument; it is nothing more than what a child does when he wants to quarrel.

Be that as it may, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not a troll in defense of the Democrat Party and all that it stands for. But the rest of your post does beg the question; by singularly bringing up the imperfections of the Republican Party's history, are you defending the Democrat Party?

171 posted on 08/31/2013 8:59:19 AM PDT by celmak
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 156 | View Replies]

To: Pelham; Sherman Logan
Pelham: "The modern conceit is that slavery is an obvious evil and a sin."

Pelham: "Moderns assume that it contains a clear denunciation of the practice until they are challenged to produce one."

You really should read the posts here, and their links.
For example, in post #127 above, Sherman Logan provided a link to a long list of Biblical quotes on slavery, some of which are quite critical of it.
In posts 116, 128 & 132 I discussed the Bible's views on slavery.

Here are two highly revealing verses:

So clearly, God has a big problem with slavery for his chosen people.
He doesn't want it.

The new testament takes the word "slave" and turns it into a metaphor:

The New Testament also makes all followers of Christ in effect God's chosen people.

So there can be no doubt that both Old and New Testaments oppose involuntary slavery to anyone, and voluntary "slavery" to anyone other than God's laws, Christ's love and our own brothers and sisters in Christ.

172 posted on 08/31/2013 9:42:05 AM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 154 | View Replies]

To: Bubba Ho-Tep

It was not my intent to suggest he ran as “TGE” and I don’t believe that I have. It is my position that the mantle of Great Emancipator has been, IMO, undeservedly placed upon him post hoc by those pushing a political narrative that the war was primarily about ending slavery when in fact it was about retaining the southern states. My comments were directed at those who swallow that narrative. Yes slavery was dead after the war, along with the southern economy and bid for independence. Look, I don’t question the immorality of holding humans in slavery, but if you negate the legitimacy of the southern drive for independence over issues of property and national self determination, what does it say of the original colonial revolt? Why were the slaveholders of 1776 any more entitled to nationhood than the slaveholders of 1861? I think they probably weren’t, so we build myths about the war and its causes that appeal to emotion and patriotism to obscure the uncomfortable realities.


173 posted on 08/31/2013 10:19:57 AM PDT by Trod Upon (Every penny given to film and TV media companies goes right into enemy coffers. Starve them out!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 115 | View Replies]

To: Sherman Logan

None of that negates the fact that Lincoln was willing to allow the institution of slavery to continue in the states where it already existed and only went to war to retain them in the union. I’m also not sure Britain and France would have recognized them without greater military success on the part of the Confederacy. They were both colonial powers practicing their own forms of de facto slavery on a national scale.


174 posted on 08/31/2013 10:30:26 AM PDT by Trod Upon (Every penny given to film and TV media companies goes right into enemy coffers. Starve them out!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 114 | View Replies]

To: BroJoeK
Ya know, I really wish I could agree with you. But the same chapter of Exodus that provides the death penalty for kidnapping also provides matter of fact discussion of buying Hebrew slaves.

2 “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. 3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.

So a Hebrew man could sell himself into slavery, or sell his children, or be enslaved because he couldn't pay a debt. The Law was opposed to illegal enslavement of Hebrews, not to enslavement as such.

The tone of the discussion about slavery throughout the OT, and for that matter the NT, is matter of fact and non-judgmental.

And of course the Law with regard to foreign slaves was essentially the same as that of the nations around them. Anything goes.

I really, really wish this was not the case, and I could say the Bible is as non-supportive of slavery as it is non-supportive of racism. But it says what it says, and that is that slavery was such a fact of life that none of the Bible writers considered abolishing it, anymore than they considered abolishing air. And for much the same reason.

That said, slavery in the ancient world was in some ways less harsh than in the American South. "All men were created equal" hadn't crossed anybody's mind yet, so the line between slavery and freedom wasn't as clear. Everybody existed on a scale, with people above and below them.

Most non-slaves weren't really free in the sense we use the term. There were intermittent conditions, and those who really were legally slaves were often wealthy, powerful and respected. See Abraham's slave Eleazar, who was his heir until his sons were born.

All women of the time existed in a condition we would consider very near that of slaves. A woman did not choose her husband, for instance, she was quite literally given, or possibly sold, to her husband.

There was no link between "race" and condition of servitude. Slaves came in all colors. So everybody knew they could be enslaved themselves. Often it was the price of losing a war or having your ship taken by pirates. To our minds it is thus totally illogical to believe men were naturally slaves, when their condition was often the result of bad luck. But the ancients just didn't see it this way.

But if you accept the proposition that all men are equal, then by definition non-equal slaves become in some sense less than men.

175 posted on 08/31/2013 11:07:49 AM PDT by Sherman Logan ( (optional, printed after your name on post))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 172 | View Replies]

To: Sherman Logan
I don't really know anybody who claims the purpose of the war in early 1861 was freeing the slaves.

I wish I could say the same. I would be willing to bet that a very large majority of Americans, if asked "what was the Civil War about?", would tell you what they were told in school: that it was fought to end slavery. That belief is common as dirt.

I agree that purposes of war shift over time, but my whole point was about the reasons for Lincoln prosecuting the war in the first place and what we as a society are taught about them. Given the way blacks were treated after the war, I think the primary purpose remained the retention of the south with ending slavery becoming the palatable moral narrative for why so many of the nation's sons were being sent off to be butchered--a rallying cry. "Freeing the slaves" sounds a lot better than "doing to the south what the British couldn't do to us." The emancipation proclamation was mostly political theater and of no practical effect until the south was reduced (and of course it did not free slaves still held in Union states).
176 posted on 08/31/2013 11:12:35 AM PDT by Trod Upon (Every penny given to film and TV media companies goes right into enemy coffers. Starve them out!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 113 | View Replies]

To: Trod Upon

I don’t know anybody who disagrees with your first sentence. Certainly not me.

Why do pro-South types keep bringing this up? Do you think Lincoln going to war to save the Union rather than to free the slaves was an illegitimate war goal? Aren’t you aware that Lincoln himself said this many times? You act like you are debunking some misapprehension, when it is just the normally accepted version of history.

But goals and intentions change with time, and nothing changes them faster than a great war. By the summer of 1862 Lincoln was determined to end slavery.

Union men were increasingly in agreement with this goal. This can be seen by the many claims early in the war that if an Emancipation Proclamation was issued numerous Union soldiers and even regiments would desert. When it actually was issued, no such thing happened. The soldiers had decided, as Lincoln had, that ending slavery was necessary to win the war. So slavery would have to go.

As far as UK not interfering, we have the records of Cabinet discussions from 1862. It is very clear from them that the primary factor was that Her Majesty’s Government could not be seen as interfering on the side of slavery. If not for that, they would have been very happy to see a major competitor nobbled. When Lincoln released the EP, they essentially dropped the idea of jumping in, with regret.


177 posted on 08/31/2013 11:19:41 AM PDT by Sherman Logan ( (optional, printed after your name on post))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 174 | View Replies]

To: Trod Upon
It is my position that the mantle of Great Emancipator has been, IMO, undeservedly placed upon him post hoc by those pushing a political narrative that the war was primarily about ending slavery when in fact it was about retaining the southern states.

I would argue that there's a difference between the reasons that led the nation to war in 1861 and the reasons that, over the course of the war and in the decades that followed, emerged as important.

I'd also argue that the binary "either/or" reasons you give aren't mutually exclusive.

Why were the slaveholders of 1776 any more entitled to nationhood than the slaveholders of 1861?

Ah, well there you run into political theory and philosophy. I tend toward a view that no one is "entitled" to nationhood, and that it's a construct established by facts on the ground, not by abstract notions of "natural law" or "entitlement." To claim otherwise is to open a can of worms in which any group, any area, anywhere can claim an "entitlement" to nationhood.

I don't fault the southern states for launching a rebellion and trying to establish their independence. What I object to is the notion that it wasn't a rebellion and was instead some irresistible legal process that no one had any right to oppose once they said the magic words.

178 posted on 08/31/2013 11:20:28 AM PDT by Bubba Ho-Tep ("More weight!"--Giles Corey)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 173 | View Replies]

To: Trod Upon
I would be willing to bet that a very large majority of Americans, if asked "what was the Civil War about?", would tell you what they were told in school: that it was fought to end slavery.

And they would be right, since the purpose at the end of a war is more important than at the beginning.

Let me give you an example from American history. The Mexican War, probably the most dishonest in US history, was purportedly entered into by Polk to repel Mexican invasion of US territory. (In fact, it is questionable whether the clash in question even occurred on US soil.)

But as US forces succeeded, the goal of the war changed, with progressively more and more of Mexico planned to annexation. First NM and then CA. By the end of the war, Polk and his ilk had determined to annex most if not all of Mexico. He even fired his treaty negotiator, who ignored the firing and produced the somewhat more moderate treaty that ended the war.

But the point is that "what the Mexican War was about" changed with the ebb and flow of the war. Public goals at the start were quite different from those at the end. Same with WBTS.

Wars, particularly civil wars, are like revolutions. Those who start a war almost never wind up where they intended.

179 posted on 08/31/2013 11:27:03 AM PDT by Sherman Logan ( (optional, printed after your name on post))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 176 | View Replies]

To: Sherman Logan
Union men were increasingly in agreement with this goal. This can be seen by the many claims early in the war that if an Emancipation Proclamation was issued numerous Union soldiers and even regiments would desert. When it actually was issued, no such thing happened. The soldiers had decided, as Lincoln had, that ending slavery was necessary to win the war. So slavery would have to go.

Emancipation Proclamation Jan 1, 1863 was followed one month later by the Union Conscription Act. Coincidence? Right....

180 posted on 08/31/2013 11:34:01 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 177 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 141-160161-180181-200 ... 221-236 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson