The Civil War Sucks

Spy Magazine ^ | March 1994 | Joe Queenan

[arly]

is the author of this tripe any relation to Mike"Lumpy Riefenstahl" Moore by chance?...I see alot of writing similarity.

[Shooter 2.5]

The real tragedy of a Civil War is it doesn't give you a chance to kill foreigners.

[squarebarb]

Try this book. Women imprisoned in great numbers during the civil war in missouri.

[Redcoat LI]

I'll second that,all slaughter,no style.

[Podkayne]

History buffs like to repeat over and again that few realize how close the south came to winning the "War of Northern Agression".

In addition - the majority of confederate soldiers were not the rich, land-owning, chivalrous, slave-holding gentry who controlled all things and had started the secession. The typical confederate grew up on a farm, knew how to use a rifle and how to live off the land. This is in contrast with the yankee immigrant city dwellers who were drafted and who made up a large percentage of the union army.

In battle after the battle the south lost marginally and used their resources to much greater advantage.

They fought for their land much as Russians fight for mother Russia. There are still great cultural differences between yankees and those living south of the Mason Dixon line.

If, for some terrible reason, there were ever to be another polarization between north and south you can bet your bottom dollar that the next war would be won before it even started.

[Congressman Billybob]

The Union considered Maryland a Confederate state by sympathies. The commander of the Union battery, on Federal Hill in the Inner Harbor, had warned the locals at the outset that in the event of any uprising, his first shots would go into the Maryland Club on Mt. Royal Avenue.

Though Maryland sent many of her sons to die on both sides in that conflict, she was a "Confederate" state.

Congressman Billybob

Latest column, "To the Supreme Court: I Quit"

[bagman]

"The despot's heel is on thy shore."

"Avenge the patriotic gore that flecked the streets of Baltimore."

Someone sure that it was Southern.

[bagman]

Your million or so civilian deaths is way too high. Do you have a citation to back it up.

[Vision]

Just asking, do you consider Maryland a Southern state?

I see the Confederacy beginning of everything south of Pratt Street in Baltimore's inner harbor. That was were the Baltimore Riots took place. Although I know Confederate soldiers were coming from Maryland's most northern counties.

[what's up]

These are numbers I have heard:

500,000 lives lost in WWII.

600,000 lives lost in the Civil War.

If the figures are true, this was far from a ginsu knife fight.

[baseballmom]

http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/other/stats/warcost.htm

Link showing casualties in all US wars.

[untenured]

Weird article I came across and I thought I'd share.

I didn't know stuff from Spy was online. "Admit it - it sucks!" was a feature they ran for awhile, trying to deflate pointy-headed devotion to something that people became expert in mostly to show off or stand out. I remember that jazz and the organic grocery were two other topics.

I always liked Spy, and am sorry it's gone.

[Skooz]

I've been viewing Ken Burn's DVD's on the Civil War on my new 60" HDTV. It's an awesome documentary even though Ken Burn's is an horse's ass in person and PBS sucks.

I taped the series years ago when it was on PBS. I recently broke out the old tapes, and they just didn't cut it. So, I paid the $99.00 + tax for the DVDs and I am very happy I did. It is superb.

I watch it on my 25" not HDTV. But, I hope to watch it on my new 57" HDTV that I would like to buy just before football season.

I bought the Shelby Foote trilogy for my dad several years ago. When he died, I inherited them and plan on reading them sometime.

[CatoRenasci]

I find these many euphemisms for the civil war amusing. My completely unreconstructed grandmother, who grew up during Reconstruction (born 1871) in Tennessee, would use some of them (War of Northern Aggression; Late Unpleasantness) for fun, but when she was speaking seriously it was always just the War, or if she was speaking to someone born after WWII, the Civil War. When I went to college in Virginia in the 1960's at VMI, as unreconstructed a Southern institution as you can imagine in those days, it was 'War between the States' in the high school text books, but the course at VMI was "Civil War and Reconstruction" and we had the "Civil War Roundtable".

[PUGACHEV]

"the American Civil War was a hokey, small-time, ginsu-knife affair that would have been over in three months if the North's generals hadn't all been cowards, bunglers or drunks." ...

The Civil War was the last Napoloeonic war, and the first fully modern war dependent upon railroads, and telegraphs. The year-long siege of Petersburg fully anticipated the First World War, and Grant's Richmond campaign anticipated our strategy in the Vietnam war. My favorite Civil War history, by the way, is Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, a four volume collection of first hand accounts colleced and edited by The Century Magazine. Sadly, it's out of print, but used copies are avaiable on the Am**on Marketplace.

"Just asking, do you consider Maryland a Southern state?

Today, parts of Maryland, those areas South of the District of Columbia, are certainly Southern: St. Mary's, Charles, and Calvert Counties, for example. But back in 1860, everything below Frederick, including Baltimore and the District of Columbia, was sympathetic to the South. Understanding this, General Windfield Scott was wise to quickly sieze the District of Columbia armory when Virginia succeeded to prevent the pro-Southern District of Columbia militia from taking control of the city, which is just what they had intended to do. While in Maryland Southern sympathy was so strong that General Benjamin Butler was forced to place cannon on what is still today known as Federal Hill to keep Baltimore under Union control. Recalling those troubled days, Maryland's official state song written in 1861, Maryland, My Maryland, contains the following lines :

The despot's heel is on thy shore,

Maryland!

His torch is at thy temple door,

Maryland!

Avenge the patriotic gore

That flecked the streets of Baltimore,

[snip]

Virginia should not call in vain,

Maryland!

She meets her sisters on the plain-

[snip]

She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-

Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!...

[Mo1]

Don't we all feel some of Helen Keller's rage deep down inside?

Is this dude for real?

[stainlessbanner]

Ken Burn's is an horse's ass in person and PBS sucks.

bump

[PUGACHEV]

"When I went to college in Virginia in the 1960's at VMI, as unreconstructed a Southern institution as you can imagine in those days"

Boy, isn't that the truth. Perhaps you remember that Virgina had a unique holiday back then known as Lee-Jackson Day. It's now Lee-Jackson-King day, but in those days it was just Lee-Jackson day to honor Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

Of course, that peculiar holiday was unknown to most people in the North, and the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners made use of this to give Southern boys a leg up on the bar exam. They would ask a procedural question that required you to calculate the last day on which a responsive pleading could be filed. The normal 21 days (or whatever it was) was calculated to fall on Lee-Jackson Day. Native Virginians, being well aquainted with the holiday, knew that the deadline was therefore extended one extra day; a non-Virginian wouldn't pick that up. The examiners then used the answers to sort out who was and wasn't a Virginian and acted accordingly.

[CatoRenasci]

LOL. Now why would some damnyankee fancy pants want to come down carpetbagging at the Virigina bar, anyway? Seems to me the bar examiners were just doing their civic duty.

[Chewbacca]

The American Civil War was a war fought over taxation and tariffs. The North was taxing the sale of Southern Cotton to help subsidize the Northern States. Cotton and tobacco was the major export at this point in history and northern factories and States didn't have a whole lot of foreign trade going on. The southern States had a valid reason for leaving the Union.

The slavery issue wasn't used until after Gettysburg to keep the English from supporting the southern cause. England having already abolished slavery within their country. By turning the war into an issue over slavery helped to turn away England from supporting the South.