Posted on 09/26/2004 8:41:19 AM PDT by GaryL
The FReeper Foxhole: As the federal government grows bigger, stronger, and more corrupt with each passing year, maybe it’s time to dream about how life would be today if the South had won the Civil War.
Richmond Times-Dispatch, Dateline: July 4th, 1863, Gettysburg, PA:
PICKETTS’ CHARGE SMASHES NORTHERN CENTER – YANKS FLEE IN DISARRAY! WEARY LINCOLN SUES FOR PEACE! CONFEDERACY VICTORIOUS!
Am I the only one who dares to speculate about how life would be today if the South had actually won the Civil War? I know, I know….“How dare he bring this up! Arrest this raving racist at once! Send for the Though Police!” It has to be the ultimate violation of political correctness to even broach this subject!
As conservatives, can we be happy that a segment of the country that fought valiantly for limited government, states rights, and the rule of law under a strong constitution was defeated? Indeed, one of the most malicious consequences of the war was the beginning of the vast shift of political power to the central government in Washington, with the resultant monopoly of power that the federal government extends over us today. This shift came, of course, at the expense of traditional Jeffersonian personal liberty and freedom, and a concomitant emasculation of the power of the individual states. It was also accompanied by a gradual corrupting of the Executive branch (which was virtually completed in the scandalous administration of Bill Clinton}, a corrupting of the rule of law, and a progressive coarsening of the culture - all outcomes, I might add, that serve as testimony to the wisdom of Lord Acton – a strong contemporary defender of the South – about the corrupting influence of absolute power. This is hardly what I would call a favorable result. As a matter of fact, I’d term it an absolute disaster – the Founding Fathers’ worse nightmare! Isn’t this the reason they fought the Revolution in the first place?
But, you say, had the South won, America would never have become the great nation that it became in the 20th century. Well, my response is that monopolies of power are never good – especially in government, as the totalitarian governments of the 20th century have shown us. . If the South had gained its freedom, there would have been two separate governments competing with each other to be efficient and honorable. Explain to me why this is bad. If either government fell short of these ideals, people would have had the option to “vote with their feet” – and option that doesn’t exist today. Competition is always good.
And, no, maybe we wouldn’t have become the “world power” that we became in this the latter half of the 20th century. Why do we assume that this would have been necessarily bad? Consider this: it’s highly unlikely that the two separate nations would have experienced anything besides limited involvement in World War I, especially since one of them – the South – would have been adhering to the wise admonition of George Washington to avoid foreign entanglements. And, as Pat Buchanan and others have suggested, WWI was an unmitigated disaster for Western civilization. Instead of making the world safe for democracy, we helped make it safe for Bolshevism, Fascism, Socialism, and Nazism.
Follow me on this. With limited American involvement, England and Germany would likely have fought it out to a resource-draining stalemate. There would have been no clear-cut winner and no clear-cut loser – and outcome, I might add, immeasurable more favorable than what actually did occur. Our involvement unquestionably tipped the balance against Germany. Without a victorious England and a defeated, humiliated Germany, there would have been no vengeful, retribution-extracting Versailles treaty sapping the German people of their pride and resources. And, it follows, there would have been no occasion for the rise of militant German nationalism, no Hitler, and, quite possibly, no World War II. All and all, not a bad tradeoff, wouldn’t you say? Oh, and I forgot to mention, no victorious Soviet empire after WWII extending communism over half the world.
But, you say, slavery was a monumental evil that had to end! Yes, I agree that slavery was terrible – but I simply disagree with the way it ended. Wouldn’t a period of gradual emancipation – which many Southern leaders were favoring by the 1860’s, although with terms not to be dictated by the North – have been immensely better for all involved, most especially the black slaves themselves? Gradual emancipation over a period of about sixty years was exactly how the North itself ended its association with slavery. Why couldn’t the South be allowed the same solution?
The problem with the Civil War as the solution to slavery was that it destroyed the fabric of Southern society, leading to immense poverty and destitution for the entire South. Would anybody deny that the worse part of this societal destruction was experienced by the freed slaves themselves? And the North wanted no part of the social problems created by freeing the slaves, as the many racist laws restricting the settlement of freedmen in the North indicate. What was the value of receiving freedom without justice?
Before the war, most slaves had a better quality of life than the poor white farmer. The war put an end to that. This massive poverty and total decimation of Southern society also served as the germination for the horrendous, nation dividing post-bellum racial tensions and animosities – the ramifications of which we have with us even today. The conditions of emancipated slaves was so bad that seventy-five years after emancipation, in a 1930’s government study called the Slave Narratives, over 70% of surviving former slaves stated that their standards of living were better before the war. We can all agree that slavery was a monumental evil, but surely gradual emancipation would have been better than this!
As a conservative who longs for limited government and the ideals of the Constitution, I am not ashamed to speculate that quite possibly we would have a better world today had the South won the Civil War. Maybe I’m dreaming, but I think limited government, personal freedom, and higher degrees of racial harmony are what we’d be experiencing. In addition, we would have a clear choice between two governments competing for our approbation. Or maybe you’re content with the rapacious, out-or-control, ever-expanding, corrupt federal government that is overwhelming us today!
free dixie,sw
However, you do seem to be saying that the number of slave-holders is counted differently from the number of "free persons." Specifically, you appear to agree that one could be a member of a slave-holder's family and still not be counted as a "slave-holder."
It appears that the percentages you posted do not mean what they're purported to mean. Your example of motor vehicle ownership is a good one: I hold title to my vehicle, but my children also "own" it, in the sense that it's a "family possession." It's obviously "mine" within the context of my family, but it's also obviously "theirs," as seen from outside my family.
For the percentages to be a correct and factual statement of slave ownership, the proper comparison would be between "slave-holders" and "land-owners," or something else that is equivalent to the idea of holding individual title to property. Instead, your source apparently compared all free persons (including minors) to individual title-holders.
Bottom line: the good professor was lying with statistics.
your post is so filled with Inaccuracies that i hardly know where to begin.
first, Robert E. Lee NEVER owned a single slave. he was an ABOLITIONIST. (in point of fact, he caused a rift in his marriage when he UNlawfully freed his WIFE's slaves, which she had received from her family by legacy. had he been anyone but REL, he would have been charged with THEFT for doing this.)
2d, sherman the destroyer, was nothing more or less than a WAR CRIMINAL, whose troopsREALLY good at killing UNarmed civilians (especially "persons of colour",like MY family which had at least 92 members tortured,raped,robbed & MURDERED in coldblood only because they were NOT white persons).
U S Grant, otoh, was a slaveOWNER & slave OVERSEER. (according to the book "Collected Annals of Old Missouri" published 1908 by the Office of the State historian,Grant was a really "good hand with the whip").
3d, Scarlett O'Hara & her real-life sisters of the plantation class not only were spared by the union army, but frequently were COLLOBORATORS with the enemy. (i am NOT a defendor of or admirer of the slaveowning elites. my family was poor;Tara was as remote, socially & financially, to them as the moon.) had we won our war for independence, the aristocracy would likely have been NEXT on our list of enemies. one major reason that we did not win was that peasant revolts (even when led by military geniuses like Lee, Forrest & Jackson) seldom succeed.
may gently suggest that you go do some research from ORIGIONAL DOCUMENTS, rather than reading the self-serving apologists for the damnyankees & the coven of thugs from the lincoln regime.
free dixie,sw
Well, duh, take any state, for example Virginia. There were 52,128 slave-holders and 1,105,453 free persons. It looks different to me.
[r9etb #122] Specifically, you appear to agree that one could be a member of a slave-holder's family and still not be counted as a "slave-holder."
No kidding. If you are a homeowner, is your 1 month old daughter a homeowner?
[r9etb #122] It appears that the percentages you posted do not mean what they're purported to mean.
I posted the Census figures and they mean precisely what they're purported to mean.
[r9etb #122] I hold title to my vehicle, but my children also "own" it, in the sense that it's a "family possession." It's obviously "mine" within the context of my family, but it's also obviously "theirs," as seen from outside my family.
And if your teenage son drives off in "his" car, without your permission, you can call the cops and have him arrested.
[r9etb #122] For the percentages to be a correct and factual statement of slave ownership, the proper comparison would be between "slave-holders" and "land-owners," or something else that is equivalent to the idea of holding individual title to property. Instead, your source apparently compared all free persons (including minors) to individual title-holders.
The source is the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. THOSE ARE CENSUS FIGURES.
A correct and factual statement of slave-holders is an enumeration of those who are holding slaves to service.
A correct and factual statement of free persons is an enumeration of free persons.
A correct and factual statement of the percentage of free persons who are slaveholders, is the number of slaveholders divided by the number of free persons.
IT IS A UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT STATISTIC.
In Heyworth #100 he asserted DeBow's 1854 report on the 1850 census cited a number of shortcomings in the methodology of counting slaves and slaveowners, and his suggestions were incorporated into the 1860 census.
Should you choose to claim that the UNITED STATES CENSUS figures are invalid, you have precisely ZERO DATA from which to manufacture any of your other ingenious faux "statistics."
Your "slave-holder" to "land-owner" proposition does not go much further than the previous bogus statistics. Marster and his three adult sons are all slave-owners. They all live on the family plantation. Marster is the land-owner. On this plantation, it would seem that 400% of the men are slave-owners. Try again.
The UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT collected CENSUS DATA to yield the statistics the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT chose to know and publish. For whatever reason, the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT did not choose to collect the data necessary to create the statistic you desire. The only way for you to gather the requisite data now would be to jump in your wayback machine and do your own CENSUS.
[r9etb #122] Instead, your source apparently compared all free persons (including minors) to individual title-holders.
First of all, it is not my source. I did not even link to it. When asked to provide documentation to support his statistical claims, Heyworth linked to the source at Heyworth #108.
The simplest way to show that those census figures are academically accepted is to show how many academics cite them. There's the link to the table I gave above showing the results of the 1860 census, offered by Prof. Benson of Furman University in South Carolina. http://alpha.furman.edu/~benson/docs/shfam60.htmHere's Prof. Hansen at Virginia Western Community College linking to them: http://www.vw.vccs.edu/vwhansd/HIS121/Census.html
These were OFFICIAL UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT CENSUS FIGURES from which all the other claimed statistics were derived.
THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT stated precisely what it did. It counted the number of free persons, and it counted the number of slaveholders, and it published a statistic showing the percentage of free persons who were slaveholders.
[r9etb #122] Bottom line: the good professor was lying with statistics.
Bottom line: You have declared the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT CENSUS data and statistics to be lies and invalid. You now have no data whatever to work with.
No, I've declared that Professor Hansen misused the Census data to produce fraudulent statistics on the percentage of the Southerners who (in practical terms) were slave-owners. Which is to say, I am suggesting that Hansen is lying to make an ideological (and incorrect) point.
I had hopes that you would be honest enough to admit the uncertainties and shortcomings of Hansen's numbers, but alas you seem to be defending him. It's your right to do so, of course; but that also makes it my responsibility to account for your biases and ideology.
drag up an ammo box, sit down, converse, learn, enjoy & contribute. it's a GOOD thing to get some new blood over here.
sorry about the MISspelling of "original". the spell-checker didn't pick that one up & i didn't re-proofread.
1. i didn't say that you thought anything at all about Grant. i just find it interesting/ironic that LEE was a committed ABOLITIONIST & that GRANT was a SLAVEOWNER & OVERSEER, especially given the constantly repeated REVISIONIST lie that the war was a "crusade against slavery".
2. Nate Forrest was both a slave owner & slave trader BUT he was NOT the founder of the KKK, despite what is frequently said of him. actually he was BRIEFLY one of the first members, but VERY PUBLICALLY resigned his membership when it became obvious to him that the KKK was NOT going to be a guerrilla group, which would continue the fight for dixie freedom.
3 & 4. sorry, but i am away from home (taking care of sick folks in my family) & my library & thus cannot comply with your wishes at this time. (send me a private missive with snailmail address & i'll send you a couple of pounds of copies from our tribal records & other original source documents concerning the rampage of the lincoln coven & the union army against asians,blacks,catholics,hispanics,indians,jews & "muddy coloured people" (like me for instance) by sherman's troop of WAR CRIMINALS. i'm working on a book on precisely that subject, which i hope to have out in the spring/summer of 05.)
free dixie,sw
BUT you're wasting your time looking for the material that i'm finding on damnyankee atrocities on the internet or "popular books".
there were HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of assaults,armed robberies,mass rapes, tortures & coldblooded premeditated murders of both UNarmed civilians & CSA POWs, lootings of private property, looting/burning of churches & synagogues and a legion of other sorts of WAR CRIMES & CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY committed by the bluebellies in the southland.
in order to find those, you do NOT look on the worldwidewierd, in secondary sources OR in encyclopedias. IF one really wants to know the TRUTH, you have to spend YEARS reading the origional source documents (like our tribal records for example).
btw, i was asked earlier why sherman, grant & other members of the high command were RESPONSIBLE for the WAR CRIMES. here's why: the Officer's Guide of the US Army states that, "every serving officer is responsible for everything which is done or which is not done by the troops under his command". failure to TAKE POSITIVE ACTION against abuses of the Law of War is evidence of that officer's lack of control of his troops & INCREASES his responsibility for those UNlawful actions.
free dixie,sw
And when you press him, he'll cite the unverifiable offhand comments or unpublished dissertations of long-dead professors. Or, if you're lucky, an alleged conversation with a curator at the Smithsonian, who, when contacted about it, will refute Watie.
as he is incapable of THOUGHT & is incapable of admitting the TRUTH,he only does ad hominum attacks on everyone who disagrees with his REVISIONIST, hateFILLED agenda.
look in any illustrated dictionary under HATER,BIGOT and or DAMNyankee & you will see his picture.
free dixie,sw
Theoretically, a squad consists of about 12 men. Here's a good overview of the organization of the armies in those days:
http://www.angelfire.com/wv/wasec5/formations.html
Very good post and very interesting insight into how things could have been. Keep up the good work.
GaryL,
Very good post and very interesting insight into how things could have been. Keep up the good work.
Oops, errant keystroke...
"...the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will."
It's over and done and in the words of another verse in Daniel:
"God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. ... Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting."
This post is in reply to the whole article. I have begun to think that when the consequences of action are taken into account, when the ripple in the pond happens, one can begin to place the source of the problem to abraham lincoln.
So, I will say this. Historians generally agree that the seeds of WWII were planted in the aftermath of WWI. And, since it is generally agreed that the U.S. presence in WWI tipped the scales of victory toward the allies, and since the U.S. federal government was full of itself after successfully subjugating the States in 1865 and after nearly erasing a whole race of people in the American Indian, and after defeating Spain in the grand little war of 1898, therefore, the blame of the Holocaust can be laid at the feet of abraham lincoln.
Because, if lincoln had been defeated, and the States Rights people had won, there would have been no nationalist feeling into the 1890’s, the U.S. and C.S. may not have joined forces to enter the European war, there probably would have been a stalemate, with no adolph hitler rising to become the German leader, and with no blame being placed on the Jews.
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