Posted on 03/22/2009 10:45:43 AM PDT by Niuhuru
It would be well to refresh your history. There are some pretty significant errors in your thesis.
Perhaps, but this is my first major posting on FR and the first time I’ve tried to articulate my thoughts on all the changes that are occuring.
Keep at it. I made it through the whole thing, and yes, I can see the similarities between the two times in history.
At some point, it became fashionable to believe that people could pay interest of 12% -or more-, and that other people could 'make' money or 'make a living' by loaning money [risk free] to the greater fool..
Usury is not a viable business.
Some simply tried to live as the always had, having small parties, buying things they could not afford, and many more refusing to seek work, believing it was beneath them to engage in manual labor or be ‘in trade’ (run a shop, work in a bank, etc.) which was something that carried a stigma in the pre-Civil war era. Over time their estates were confiscated due to taxation and they slowly starved to death. They simply blinded themselves and refused to see the world as it had become and would be. They lived in denial of the situation.
This is abject nonsense. I wrote my thesis on post-Civil War Alabama and Georgia, with a specific concentration on the Chattahoochee River Valley, with slight excursions into coastal South Carolina and the Savannah River Valley. As part of that process I reviewed pretty much all the relevant census, property, probate and deed records, as well as any directories, professional associations, etc. that were available. Records reveal that the overwhelming majority of pre-war planters adapted and wound up (after a period of adjustment) pretty much back where they were to begin with. A simple review of the census will show that the big names in the counties along the CRV were largely the same family names in 1880 that they were in 1860. Many of those families continue today.
There may have been a stigma associated with 'being in trade' in the very stratified society of England at that time and earlier, but no such stigma obtained in the South. Most pre-war planter families had holdings in mercantile firms, banks, cotton factor firms, etc. The aristocratic society of Charleston was firmly based on trade, as was the somewhat less aristocratic (but no less haughty) society of Eufaula AL.
While taxation is a bugbear for us today (quite deservedly), the level of taxation in the South in the 1870s was not going to cause anybody to go under.
Families that declined (and there were a number) generally did so because fathers and sons were killed in the War. A less romantic but thoroughly documented cause for the failure of some old families. Usually the substance of the estate was consumed in caring for minor children. Even then, the survivors tended to marry into other old families and thus continued, although under a different name. You can trace these winding byways through the probate court records.
Margaret Mitchell popularized a fictional version of the post-Civil War South in Gone With the Wind. It has misled many, even though it never happened.
Very interesting - later...
“This was the first time that anyone had used chemicals in any war.”
Come on. If you wrote this, assertions like this vaporize (no pun intended) your credibility on the spot.
Pretty sure Ft. Sumter was the shootee.
Big mistakes here.
You need to put this on a shelf for awhile and do more research.
I meant in modern warfare.
You have got to be kidding!
1915 is modern.
Okay then, this is just my first major post in regards to the general trends that led up to this situation. I did remember however that someone mentioned Saddamm as someone who was among the first of world leaders to use chemical weapons, or maybe it was chemical weapons against his own people.
Okay then, I got it.
I only went as far back as the mid forties because I wanted to deal with the warfare of WWII and the resulting trends.
As for the rest, I only went by what cmae up and the subtle behavioral patterns that have resulted in this mess.
VietNam reinstated the draft ?
http://www.sss.gov/induct.htm
Egh, I posted it the minute I finished writing. I was in a state of excitement and my first thought was about simply getting it posted.
Good Lord, were all the other topics taken?
I keeed! I keeed! :0)
You’d do well to speak with a few actual southerners, descendants of Confederate soldiers, people whose ancestors held no slaves and yet still supported that war, before you write one more word. Congratulations on the effort; it’s certainly more than most ever put forth, but you’ve fallen prey to more popular misconceptions than can be accounted for, from just taking “Gone With The Wind” as some sort of almanac of all things southern. You run the risk of unintentional parody, here.
Chemical warfare was known in ancient Greece.
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