Very few of mine weren’t Confederate. Less than a quarter had slaves, only a very few had more than a few. None came out of the war with anything more than their land and house, some with not even that. None left. The decades following, Reconstruction, were worse than the depths of the Great Depression. Votes really didn’t count, Federal occupation more or less installed their own. Kangaroo courts were installed as well. The spoils of war were divvied up amongst them.
Such is life for the losers of every war. At least we’re alive and still here. Loyalists to the British were killed or run off, their properties auctioned to pay for the war effort, here at least. It wasn’t pretty, and the Constitutional foundation of this country began the slow death that we’re witnessing today at that time.
There are a lot of regrets, and a lot was lost. They were cast into a pit of poverty and ignorance that took a century to claw and scratch their way out of. I’m the first to graduate college since antebellum times. We paid a dear price. Over a hundred kinsman dead and buried, scattered across Virginia, most unknown as far as location. No wealth to speak of.
So, those calling for civil war, understand what you may be letting yourselves in for. The war won’t end with the cessation of hostilities. If you lose, it stays ugly for quite some time afterwards, for your children and even grandchildren.
That is true. For the South, it was too high a price to pay in order to maintain the institution of slavery. They should have gone along with the compromise of no slavery in the territories, and the eventual extinction of slavery. But they refused. In modern times. the options are a little more stark. We are facing reinstitution of slavery upon us through a marxist state that knows everything we think and everywhere we go, and our children and grandchildren will have it even harder than we will as the iron curtain falls on their lives.