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!
offhand i can't think of a single traditional historian who would make such a SIMPLISTIC argument.certain REVISIONISTS & southHATERS would however.
free dixie,sw
LOL!!!! You're really reaching now, sw. By "traditionalist," I take it you're referring to historians who agree with you.
I must rely only on such poor sources as John C. Calhoun's famous speech in opposition to the Clay Compromise of 1850.
He opens his speech with the following words:
I have, senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion. Entertaining this opinion, I have, on all proper occasions, endeavored to call the attention of both the two great parties which divided the country to adopt some measure to prevent so great a disaster, but without success. The agitation has been permitted to proceed with almost no attempt to resist it, until it has reached a point when it can no longer be disguised or denied that the Union is in danger. You have thus had forced upon you the greatest and gravest question that can ever come under your consideration: How can the Union be preserved?
And there you have it all in one paragraph. Slavery, agitation for its abolition, the threat of disunion, and all in the context of one of the great Sectional Crises. The only thing I lack, apparently, is a "traditionalist historian." Alas, I must make do with the words of a great statesman of the time.
Now be honest, sw -- aren't you embarrassed to have such a weak position?
Perhaps you are unaware that Winston Churchill wrote a satirical tome entitled - "If Lee had not won thw battle of Gettysburg"... all THIS crap would have happened, and he goes on to list all the crap that has actually happened.
Thanks for informing me about that. I'm going to see if I can find it. Although I would tend to doubt that Churchill would agree with my take about the United States staying out of WWI!
The actual enumerated number of slaveholders was 347,255. After that, a rather unique "scientific" method was used and "the number swelled to about 2,000,000." Further "academically-accepted" massaging of the numbers swelled the number to "about two million and a quarter."
SOURCE: Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November 1860 - April 1861, edited by Jon L. Wakelyn, University of North Carolina Press, 1996, ISBN: 0-8078-2278-7, p. 79
James D.B. DeBow, "The Interest in Slavery of the Southern Non-Slaveholder," (Charleston: Evans & Cogswell, 1860)
DeBow begins as follows, this text running continuous to start his pamphlet.
"When in charge of the national census office, several years since, I found that it had been stated by an abolition Senator from his seat, that the number of slaveholders in the South did not exceed 150,000. convinced that it was a gross misrepresentation of the facts, I caused a careful examination of the returns to be made, which fixed the actual number at 347,255, and communicated the information, by note, to Senator Cass, who read it in the Senate. I first called attention to the fact that the number embraced slaveholding families, and that to arrive at the actual number of persons which the census showed to a family. When this was done, the number swelled to about 2,000,000."Since these results were made public, I have had reason to think, that the separation of the schedules of the slave and the free, was calculated to lead to omissions of the single properties, and that on this account it would be safe to put the number of families at 370,000, and the number of actual slaveholders at about two million and a quarter.
"Assuming the published returns, however, to be correct, it will appear that one-half of the population of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisianna, excluding the cites, are slaveholders, and that one-third of the population of the entire south are similarly circumstanced. The average number of slaves is nine to each slave-holding family, and one-half of the whole number of such holders are in possession of less than five slaves."
But the supreme irony can be found in the fact that early in 1861 the Republicans in Congress gave their votes to measures organizing the territories of Colorado, Nevada, and Dakota without prohibiting slavery. After beating Douglas in 1860, they organized the territories along the pattern of his policy, not Lincoln's.
[Author's italics.]
Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition, copr 1948, Vintage Books edition 1989, p. 152, fn.
ALSO, if you can believe the tribal records at Tallequah, OK, he also could NOT afford a CSA General's uniform OR a "proper sword".
the General was a self-taught genius at partisan warfare, but had little money.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
the whole thing of course is speculation, inasmuch as we have not YET won our freedom from the damnyankees.
free dixie,sw
ROFL!!!! You have got to take an anger management class, little man.
Now, Watie will argue that the census is worthless and that one has to look at the tax records county by county, but he doesn't present any number that would be yielded by that method. What he actually asserts is that the number DeBow gives for enumerated slaveholders, comprising about 5-6% of the white population is basically correct. But he also believes that this number incorporates the families as well.
Again, in the absence of evidence beyond Watie's shouting "no it isn't" or occasionally citing the unpublished dissertation of a dead professor, these are the numbers. If you've got some other ones, let's see 'em.
The further mathematical calculations have no bearing on reality, and make no allowance for one person being the holder of a large number of slaves.
Hypothetically, -one- person could have held -all- the slaves. The mathematical computation upon which you rely would not be affected. The computational method irrationally relies upon the slaves being equally distributed among all White families.
Using such computational methods, one may state that in the 1992 election, approximately 100 million people voted. There were about 4 people per family. Thus, in 1992, there were about 400 million voting families in the USA.
In the immortal words of Henry Lee, "Something wrong."
Correction. That should have been one family.
I'm surprised them Yankee Freepers ain't never mentioned the baseless and vile rumor that President Davis was acceptin' deferred comp-in-say-shun from the huge Confederate contractor Hallibubba!
should i be offended by your STUPID name-calling????
the TRUTH is the TRUTH, no matter how much you may wish it to be otherwise.
free dixie,sw
But the entire point of this argument is Watie's attempt to prove that slavery played a minor role in the south of the time. To do that, he's only willing to count the number of actual slaveholders, without attributing those slaveholders to some larger demographic unit like a family. And there's a big difference between saying that only 5% of southerners owned slaves and saying that 30% of southern families owned slaves. Even though both may be true, the former minimizes the economic reality of how deeply entrenched slavery was in southern society and how widespread personal economic interest in the institution extended.
The further mathematical calculations have no bearing on reality, and make no allowance for one person being the holder of a large number of slaves.
Hypothetically, -one- person could have held -all- the slaves. The mathematical computation upon which you rely would not be affected. The computational method irrationally relies upon the slaves being equally distributed among all White families.
No it doesn't. Where are you getting that? The number of slaves hasn't even entered the discussion, although there were 3.5 million slaves in the south. The one assumption is that slaveholder families are the same size, on average, as non-slaveholding families in the south. The number is question is 347,255 slaveholders. Are you saying that one person could have held all the slaves and the other 347,254 didn't actually? Your argument makes no sense. The way it actually breaks down is that only 6% of slaveholders owned more than 50 slaves. 88% of owners had fewer than 20 and 50% less than ten
his mind, such as it is, is made up. everything that conflicts, however slightly, from his "set in concrete" drivel, anti-Southron bigotry & arrogant ignorance is, of course, WRONG & everyone who doesn't agree with him is fatally flawed as well.
more fool he.
NOTE: i DID get him to admit that his attack, on my thesis concerning steam traction machines/animal powered agricultural equipment, as replacements for persons (slave or free), was FALSE! (when dealing with a HATER/BIGOT, any progress, no matter now slight, is an improvement.)
free dixie,sw
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.