[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

Nobody will ever convince me the poor, young white boys of the South fought, and were willing to die, for the Confederacy to continue slavery.

There was a huge cultural difference between North and South and I think most southerners simply resented Yankees dictating the fate of southerners.

[TexConfederate1861]

You are right. And they are STILL resented at times.

[MagnumPi]

I highly recommend any Civil War novice to read a book called Co. Aytch by Sam Watkins who was a Confederate veteran. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743255410/qid=1108821676/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-9020701-1271258?v=glance&s=books
Awesome insight into ordeal of a front line soldier- you feel his pain when every friend or foe is killed.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Nobody will ever convince me the poor, young white boys of the South fought, and were willing to die, for the Confederacy to continue slavery. There was a huge cultural difference between North and South and I think most southerners simply resented Yankees dictating the fate of southerners.

Slavery was the only significant cultural difference between the North and South in 1860. The county where my dad's folks came from in Tennessee voted over 6 to 1 to remain in the Union. Of course there were very few slaves in that mountainous region of Tennessee. And that pattern generally held in all the relatively slaveless areas in the South. No slavery, no desire to secede. The farmer from Tennessee had much more in common with the farmer from Indiana than he did with the slaveowner from the deep South.

[Arkinsaw]

Nobody will ever convince me the poor, young white boys of the South fought, and were willing to die, for the Confederacy to continue slavery.

There was a huge cultural difference between North and South and I think most southerners simply resented Yankees dictating the fate of southerners.

Indeed, there are a vast number of reasons for Southerners to choose to fight. Honor, youthful desire for glory, desire to emulate revolutionary war ancestors, machismo, to remain in good standing with the females, protection of their homes, constitutionalism, or even the simple fact of their duly elected state government conscripting them into service.

You even have to take into account the fact that there were differences in motivation based on background, and rank. The motivations were probably very different between the officer corps and the private soldier. But even there you can't make blanket statements when your reflect on the motivations of people like Patrick Cleburne, Robert E. Lee, or John C. Pemberton.

You also have to take into account the fact that motivations changed over the course of the war. Someone's motivation for fighting in April of 1861 can be far different than their motivation for continuing the struggle in 1864.

Those who spend their life trying to get Confederate monuments taken down, or trying to stamp out any reasonable word said about Civil War era Southerners do not make such distinctions. They refuse to account for such complexity in their formulations and pronouncements.

Truth in this instance is a grey area. Unfortunately a grey truth does not advance their particular modern political agenda as quickly as sound-bites and painting with a single broad swipe of the brush. The intellectually dishonest methods get more traction in the short run.

Sadly, many on the pro-Southern side have taken to fighting this tactic by merely reversing it and flinging it back. I can understand that, because its difficult to fight a two second simplistic and misleading soundbite with a two hour historical lecture.

The NAACP can get on television or in print and throw a two second verbal bomb. The nature of the media is such that it is impossible to take the time to explain the complex nature of why the verbal bomb is misleading. It is far easier to develop your own verbal bomb despite it being less than the full truth of the matter.

There is also the danger of dumbing down your own self, and your own message, when you get into that kind of fight. You can come up with a cute sarcastic turn of the tables to show the futility of judging 1860's people by modern standards but you run the risk of your own supporters adopting that position as the message itself. Your own supporters can even lose sight of the complexity behind your position.

It's my opinion that we have spent the last several years concentrating too much on verbal bombs, and not enough time doing the harder work of educating ourselves, and the public about the complex nature of the event.

The average American understands there are complexities involved only the dumbest are swayed by the simplistic pronouncements we so often see from either side. People pretty much think of the NAACP pronouncements on the subject as nothing more than immature posturing and view pro-Southern soundbites of the same sort as just a little bit loony. Most people recognize demagoguery when they hear it.

Personally, I think we are better off recommending a good book in our two-second soundbite than we are trying to use it to fling a little bomb back at our detractors.

[smug]

"Secession may have been wrong in the abstract, and has been tried and settled by the arbitrament of the sword and bayonet, but I am as firm in my convictions today of the right of secession as I was in 1861. The south is our country, the North is the country of those who live there. We are an agricultural people; they are a manufacturing people. They are the descendent's of the good Puritan Plymouth Rock stock, and we of the South from the proud and aristocratic stock of Cavaliers. We believe in the doctrine of States Rights and they in the doctrine of centralization.
----We only fought for our State rights, they for Union and power Sam Watkins, Pvt. CSA 1882

Company Aytch
Or a sideshow of the Big Show
by Plumb Books

[canalabamian]

Ditto, friend.