Ten Neo-Confederate Myths

March 9, 2013 | vanity

[DustyMoment]

Are you kidding me? You have refuted pretty much every one of my facts and I doubt most of yours.

Re-read the thread if you don’t believe me.

[JCBreckenridge]

They should have gone to Breckenridge.

[donmeaker]

You are right. I somehow convoluted Greenville being the capital of Franklin, its Unionist convention (to secede from Tennessee) and the battle of Franklin.

Serves me right for not looking it up.

[BroJoeK]

Ecliptic: "Someone please show me the official documents or discussions concerning doing away with slavery that caused the south to succeed.
The south did not just leave the union because of slavery."

Sorry, I missed your post on first review.
You ask an excellent question.

Secessionists themselves wrote some documents explaining why they declared independence from the United States.
This site shows all four of them, though not in proper sequence.
The correct sequence is South Carolina (#1), Mississippi (#2), Georgia (#5), then Texas (#7).

The first two (South Carolina and Mississippi) are especially important to understand, because they were the first ones ever written -- in late December 1860 and early January 1861 -- in the heat and flush of excitement of the moment, and before there was a lot of feed-back or second thoughts coming in from other Southerners or sympathetic northerners.

In those two documents we see the primary motivating force behind secession, and there is simply no doubt: it was their concerns to protect the institution of slavery, and nothing else.

Later, the argument gets gussied up with some other minor issues.
But I thought of an analogy to explain it all:

Consider a long and happily married couple.
Of course, neither thinks the other is "perfect", both are fully aware of the other's short-comings, but since the marriage is happy and stable, both are willing to overlook and forgive any minor matters.
That sounds perfectly realistic, right?

OK, now let's suppose that, for sake of discussion, the wife suddenly discovers her husband has been leading a double life all these years.
He has, oh, say, a second family, just something totally unacceptable to her, and so she decides to end the marriage.

On her way out the door, she tells him why, the real reason: he has a second family.
But then she also throws in all the other little stuff which bothered her all those years, but were not by themselves cause for divorce.

In the case of secession beginning in 1860, protecting slavery was their real reason, everything else was minor stuff, thrown in as they walked out the door.

You can see this clearly, by reading South Carolina and Mississippi first -- there's no mention of anything except slavery.
Later, as it's going out the door, so to speak, Texas throws in some other minor items, none of which individually, or all together, would have driven Southerners to secession.

If you ask, "how real was the actual threat to slavery," well, that is a complicated question.
Yes, Southern secessionist "Fire Eaters" exaggerated the immediate threat to slavery represented by the election of "Black Republican" Lincoln, in November 1860.
But long term there's no doubt that slavery was in for a rough-go, no matter which course of action the Southern slave-holders chose.

[BroJoeK]

MestaMachine: "I can’t see that this is the entire story.
It doesn’t fit with all the things that were going on at the time and this is a bad rap on the South."

It is not intended to be "the entire story", simply a listing of the most commonly seen Neo-Confederate myths, along with fact-based responses.
It is intended to forewarn and forearm readers who might encounter these myths in life, or on other FR threads.

So you say, "this is a bad rap on the South"?
Can you quote some examples of what you consider a "bad rap"?

[BroJoeK]

KoRn: "lol Did you get up this morning, and just feel like starting a fight?
This thread is gonna be a good one! lol"

Hardly! The idea struck some months ago, and I thought about it and puttered with it for a long time before, ahem, a fellow FReeper urged me to finish and post it. ;-)

[BroJoeK]

allendale: "Whatever the reasons, there is no doubt that the formation of the Confederacy was once the greatest domestic threat to the well being of the United States.
Today the greatest threat is the Democratic Party."

And how many people connect the fact that Confederates were also Democrats, who fought to preserve special priveleges for some to live off the uncompensated labor of others?

[BroJoeK]

Texas Fossil: "It is silly to refight a bloody war when we are facing the biggest threat to the survival of the nation."

Not trying to re-fight anything, just hoping to forewarn and forearm readers regarding some common Neo-Confederate myths.

[BroJoeK]

WXRGina: "I’ve long heard from people who have lived around the U.S. that blacks are treated much better in the South than in the North and other “non-South” states. Hmmmmm..."

Might I suggest that historically, Southerners more often saw blacks as helpful servants, whereas Northerners saw them as unwelcomed competitors for low-wage jobs?

Today things are somewhat different, and I'm not certain if anyone can really say: how much does, oh, say, inner-city Atlanta differ from, say, inner-city Philadelphia?

[WXRGina]

Good points, Joe!

[BroJoeK]

CodeToad: "Since yankee liberals HATE the South so much, then why not just go ahead a not oppose secession?"

Nobody here "hates the South".
What concerns us is Neo-Confederates distorting the truth about the Civil War.

[BroJoeK]

John S Mosby: "Let’s take the logical conclusions from these “results”, and fast forward into the 1900’s and to today.
You have buttinsky Progressive BS from the get go.
And obamaumao is Abe Lincoln. Got news— he suuuure is.
Statists of the World, Unite."

The O-man may well look like "Black Republican" Abe Lincoln to you.
To me he looks the spitting image of Jefferson Davis, and with the same goal: to put us all on Marse' plantation.

[BroJoeK]

AmericanExceptionalist: "But I am equally repelled by the heavy-handed approach of the Unionists, who desired an overweening federal government... "

In 1861 Unionists did not support "an overweening federal government", they simply opposed the Slave-holders unilateral, unjustified declarations of secession, and their declaration of war on the United States.

All our current "overweening federal government" began about 100 years ago, with the Progressive era passage of 16th and 17th Amendments.

[x]

New Jersey had 4 faithless electors who supported Lincoln.

I gather the Democrats didn't get all their ballots organized. There was a Douglas slate of electors and a fusion slate of anti-Republican Douglas-Breckenridge-Bell electors.

Only the three Douglas men who appeared on both ballots beat the top four Republican electors. Those who were only on one of the two competing Democrat ballots lost to the Republicans. That is if I've read and understood this correctly.

It's certainly an interesting case, but I don't think it significantly changes the popular or the (all important) electoral vote count.

FWIW Something not so very different happened a century later which leads many to conclude that Nixon actually beat Kennedy in the popular vote. It's not about fraud in Illinois or Texas (though that matters as well).

Rather it's that two sets of competing Democrat electoral slates in Alabama were both counted as votes for Kennedy by the media. If you count the votes for the independent slate as not Kennedy's Nixon carried the national popular vote.

[BroJoeK]

PhiloBedo: "Yep...this thread should be titled neo-yankee revisionism, on full display."

There is actual history, and there are Neo-Confederate myths.
This thread separates some myths from reality.

[JCBreckenridge]

It’s the last time there’s been more than one faithless elector in any presidential election.

Can you imagine that 1860 election today?

[BroJoeK]

Born to Conserve: "Usually there are two sides to a debate..."

And you would like to present which side?

[BroJoeK]

Liberty Valance: "How’s that reconstruction thing workin’ out for ya?"

Say what?

[BroJoeK]

Fast Moving Angel: "……….I’d be a little concerned when they begin comparing the current resident of the White House with the 16th who..."

Your characterizations of Lincoln are inaccurate and/or unfair.
Our current president more closely resembles his fellow Democrat, Jefferson Davis.

[BroJoeK]

x: "Maybe it’s the “all” and “only” that sets some people off.
The problem is that some states didn’t secede when it was all about slavery, but waited until war had already begun.
I’d just say secession was about slavery and leave it at that."

Sorry, I'm usually so careful about saying "Deep South secession was all about slavery" to prevent any confusion over Upper South states: Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee & Arkansas.

Those states all voted against secession, and only switched after war had already begun -- when they felt forced to chose sides.
Virginians, for example, can and do claim they seceded due to "oppression" as specified in their Constitution ratification statement.

But they also chose secession after the Confederacy had formally declared war on the United States, so they well knew from the beginning what they would be getting.