Posted on 09/02/2013 12:49:27 PM PDT by AnalogReigns
Relating to Syria:
Not a blog or article authored by me (see link above), however, it puts into perspective the USA's own 4 year civil war....where experts estimate (and no one really knows, or can know...) 100,000 to 250,000 CIVILIAN DEATHS were caused by the war--the vast majority being in the South.
Some historians estimate that as many as 50,000 civilians died of starvation as a result of Sherman's march to the sea alone.
And effective dictators keep starvation as one of their tools.
That plus population controls, means they can throw the switch anytime. No food to our enemies. Bye-bye.
I think it was Paul Johnson in “Modern Times” that wrote that pretty much every major famine in the 20th century was man caused, and usually in totalitarian countries.
I'm sure there was a goodly number of Southern rural white people who suffered the same fate. Most whites in the South were NOT plantation owners. Many were simply folks trying to eke out a living off land that hadn't been kept up for several years. And after the war, there were fewer men to do the heavy work.
Didn’t happen. See the census reports from 1860 and 1870.
“It gets harder and harder to verify anything in the internet era where bogus but realistic-appearing websites proliferate.”
There’s a commercial playing on the radio spewing the nonsense that if you don’t have a professional looking website nobody will take your business seriously.
Somehow, I suspect Scarlett O’Hara types found survival in the post-war South a good deal more challenging than their former slaves. Who do you think had grown the food before the war? Not Scarlett.
Sorry I can’t give you more exact info than that. The author was casting a critical eye on precisely those census figures -— trying to get better estimates from other documentary/testimentary sources. Bah. I read so much IO can’t remember where I read it. But I think it was with in the last month. Possibly — possibly - a book review in the Guardian (UK).
from the article: "100,000 to 250,000 CIVILIAN DEATHS were caused by the war--the vast majority being in the South."
AnalogReigns: "It is however and undisputed fact that tens of thousands (or perhaps as many as 250,000) of civilians died as a result of the US Civil War."
AnalogReigns: "My point stands whether 10,000 or 250,000 of civilians died as a result of our Civil War.
All historians put the number in at least the 10s of thousands..."
AnalogReigns: "My main point is—as civilized as we think we are—in an era without any 'weapons of mass destruction' the USA—primarily by the actions of the US government—killed a LOT of our own civilians, during a relatively short period of time."
The fact is that historians have searched for over 100 years to find actual evidence of all the massive civilian deaths claimed by pro-Confederate propagandists.
They searched news reports, legal documents, even grave yards to find some evidence -- anything -- to justify a claim of "massive civilian deaths."
They found nothing.
Finally they went to the census reports and tried to estimate what would the 1870 population have been without the Civil War.
Well, it turns out that between 1850 and 1860 the US population grew 35%.
Between 1870 and 1880 it grew 30%.
So, extrapolating from 1860 to 1870 we might expect it to grow, say, 32%.
That would make the 1870 population 41,500,000.
But since the actual 1870 count was only 38,500,000 we have a "shortfall" of around 3,000,000 people.
Subtract out 600,000 military deaths leaves 2,400,000 "missing" civilians.
So who are those civilians?
Well, maybe a million babies not born because their fathers were at war.
Maybe a million immigrants who stayed at home in their Old Countries out of fear of the US war.
And maybe 400,000 old or sick people who died sooner than necessary because their families were not able to provide for them as well as they would have during peacetime.
And that is what all the large estimates of civilian deaths amount to -- statistical guess work.
There's no hard evidence to support any of it.
What the evidence does support is a massive dislocation of former slaves after the war, unknown numbers of whom may have died.
Not one of those deaths was at the hands of Union troops.
Evidence also reveals a pro-Confederate propaganda campaign which started at war's end, whose purpose was to restore both self-respect and political clout of Southern states, and which to a large degree succeeded.
For a specific list of enumerated US Civil War atrocities, I'd challenge anyone to produce a more complete or accurate list than this one:
Ten War Crimes of the US Civil War
Note that three were committed by the Union, seven by the Confederacy.
The silly part is that people still talk about Sherman’s March to the Sea as if it were uniquely destructive.
Whereas the fact is that Sherman subsequently marched across SC, and ALL parties at the time were agree that the destruction was MUCH greater in SC than in GA and later in NC.
For instance, it was reported that in GA few houses along the line of march were burned, while in SC few escaped. It would be surprising if the people were not also treated more harshly by the soldiers who blamed SC for the war.
For some reason Marching through Georgia has caught people’s attention ever since. Marching through South Carolina has fallen into a memory hole.
I suspect part of the double standard may be due to other Southerners thinking: "Well, they got us into this mess. It was their idea."
THAT’S JUST SILLY.
IT’S UNFORTUNATE THAT OUR WAR CASUALITIES ARE BEING USED AS A reason to stay out of Syria.
I would wager more than 90% of the posters are in agreement on this.
A secondary issue could be what would be the best course of action from Israel’s viewpoint.
OH; And I always understood that the war winner wrote the history books.
T
A French unit did join the Confederates in the Battle of Palmito Ranch in 1865—the only time that an organized military force from a foreign country intervened in the war. This Confederate victory was the last battle of the war.
Which historians 'estimate' that figure?
That would be over 5% of the total population of the state of Georgia at that time, slave and free. Nothing I have ever seen or read spoke of any starvation in the wake of Sehrman's march, let alone 50,000 people.
I think you are pulling statistics out of the air to make some contempoary political point.
It's not nice to mess with our history. In my experience, it's something typically that the hard left does, not conservatives.
Ping
Prince Albert was reported to have asked both the prime minister candidates to promise not to support the pretended confederacy, because Prince Albert thought slavery immoral.
Black slaves not only supported themselves, but also their putative owners.
“Black slaves not only supported themselves, but also their putative owners.”
Wouldn’t you agree that that would depend on their knowledge and occupational duties? That is one can just group them all as field hands or house workers or held by large plantations v. small holdings?
This whole discussion is WAY off subject which was intervention in Syria.
I say nugatory.
Thanks for that info. I was just talking with my kids about World War I, and quipped that I wonder if the Revolutionary War might have been close to being considered a “world war”.
Then they asked about the Civil War, and I told them I didn’t think there was much involvement by other countries.
You should tell your kids that our Revolutionary War fell between the First World War and the Second World War, and then explain that historians consider the Seven Years War (1756 to 1763 our "French and Indian War") to be the true "First World-Wide War."
The Second World-Wide War was the Napoleonic War of 1803 through 1815, including our War of 1812.
These First and Second World-wide wars saw Britain and Germany allied against France.
That makes the two great 20th century wars World Wars Three (1914 to 1918) and Four (1939 to 1945), with Britain, France, Russia and the USA allied against Germany.
Then we could call the Cold War World War Five (1946 to 1991),
and now the War on Terror, World War Six -- except that by now words have lost all meanings, there is no "war" it's just "overseas contingency operations" against "workplace violence"... sort of, I think.
Of course, hopefully your kids are home-schooled, otherwise government teachers may not smile so kindly at their precociousness. ;-)
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