Southern Jews and the Confederacy

Jewish Press ^ | Jul 28 2010 | Lewis Regenstein

[Vigilanteman]

One more thing: do you really think the wanton destruction of livestock and lives, homes and harvests, families and flocks helped the Union War effort enough to have made any great impact on the length of the war?

Or did it just set the stage for the revenge of reconstruction?

When southern raiders went north and burned the steel mills owned by Thaddeus Stevens (one of the Radical Republicans who advocated and engineered the harsh postbellum treatment which Lincoln opposed), they were careful not to destroy the hovels where his workers lived near the mills.

[frithguild]

And I though we were talking about the involvement of Jewish soldiers in the Confederate Army.

[x]

Lee's Army spent almost a month in south central Pennsylvania before the fateful approach to Gettysburg from the north and west. The only atrocities recorded against the civilian population was one incident of the southern army near York capturing a group of 40 African American men whom they thought to be runaway slaves (but were mostly free men) and sending them south to slavery. There was another incident of Southern soldiers snatching headgear off the heads of townspeople in exchange for their battered headgear. Lee promptly issued an order that all such exchanges going forward were to be voluntary or paid in cash. While the presence of a large hostile army was obviously intimidation, compare and contrast Lee's Army comparative gentle treatment of the Pennsylvania population to Sherman's treatment of the Georgia population one year later. Sherman's army paid the civilians for nothing, took everything which they deemed useful and wantonly burned and destroyed everything else, including civilian homes with the inhabitants still inside.

It must have really s*cked to be one of those 40 guys. But even assuming you're right about the scale of the damage. Lee's army was in Pennsylvania for less than two weeks. Northern armies had been in the South for periods of that length without doing any serious damage. If Lee had been in Pennsylvania longer, if there had been more fighting over a longer period of time, who knows whether Southern troops would have been able to maintain discipline.

They went out of their way to slaughter, pillage and destroy everything in their path from Atlanta to the sea, a scale of destruction unmatched since the Thirty Year's War, some two centuries earlier.

Sure, if you want to overlook the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon. The Spanish and Russian campaigns and the war of Frenchman against Frenchman were quite destructive. Even our Indian wars were disastrous for those involved.

[AnalogReigns]

If the North was not trying to end slavery why would the south need to secede to preserve it?

Lincoln indeed was an abolitionist, and had spoken in the strongest terms against slavery. The South was logically afraid his presidency would push for it, even though he had not promised he would, and on more than one occasion even promised to keep slavery for the sake of the union. Therefore thinking Lincoln MIGHT push for abolition, the powers that be in the South seceded, seeding their own nightmare.

Lincoln and the North initially went to war for UNION not abolition, even though they ended the war with the abolition of slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 fundamentally changed the purpose of the war--from the North's perspective.

[frithguild]

One more thing: do you really think the wanton destruction of livestock and lives, homes and harvests, families and flocks helped the Union War effort enough to have made any great impact on the length of the war?

From the post:

When the War broke out like every other Southern woman, I immediately began work for the soldiers: I organized a sewing society, to cut and make garments for them. I made it a point to try and meet every train that brought soldiers through our town, and, with others, frequently walked from my home, sometimes at two o'clock in the morning, to take food to our men as they passed through. We always greeted them with the wildest enthusiasm, and no thought of defeat ever entered our minds . Whenever the boys were fortunate enough to get home on short furloughs, they were the guests of the town - everybody feted them and nothing was too much to do in their honor.

So the short answer to your question is a resounding, "Yes." The enemy soldiers and their means of support, in this case the spirit of the citizens, must be crushed as effectively and quickly as possible to acheive the most effective resolution of a war - lasting peace. "There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited." - Sun Tzu

Reconstruction, sir, is a different topic.

[rockrr]

The south received far better treatment post war than the losers of any other insurrection in history. Take a look at losing side of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and rebellions in Britain, Italy, Spain, and China for example.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

... while most of the tariff revenue was spent in the North.

Uh huh. Here's The Annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the state of the finances for 1860. It has a complete breakdown of federal expenditures. Perhaps you can point out where over 50% of the money is going to benefit the north.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

My guess is that a third of the world's population, given the opportunity, would trade their current existence for that of a slave at Monticello.

You do know what happened to the slaves at Monticello, right? Nine of them were freed--the Hemmings family mainly. The remaining 130 were auctioned off to the highest bidder on the Monticello lawn.

[huldah1776]

Any hope of a return? Would it be possible?

[SJackson]

I don't get the idea that the author of the posted piece is accusing Lincoln of being an antisemite....he accuses Sherman of antisemitism, which is the first I've ever heard of. He does not give any specific facts to show it, however. I can understand someone of his background calling Sherman a lot of names.

I knew where this thread would go when I posted it, which is a shame, the author was simply explaining why he honors his ancestors. You're correct, he's not accuing Lincoln of being antisemitic, he is implying the north was, an arguement he bases largely on the Grant incident. Which Sherman was thought to have instigated, in a letter either to Grant or the Adjutant General. Of course Grant claims the order was issued with an aide, without his knowledge. And some historians suggest that a major factor was Grant's father (in law?) who was earning beaucoup dollars trading cotton in partnership with a practitioner of you know what religion. If you want to shut down pops trading, barring Jews would have been a good way to do it.

In any event, in the context of their time neither Sherman nor Grant nor Lincoln demonstrated any animosity toward Jews, and they had ample opportunity, so it's silly to fret about northern antisemitism a decade and a half before Marr invented the term, in Germany.

Since this is so much fun, I'm posting his earlier article, Shame of the Yankees - America's Worst Anti-Jewish Action .

[central_va]

The coming Civil War 2, will be the slaves of the social welfare programs fighting for their masters against the freedom fighters and there will be no north or south but probably city limit lines. Actually, with the administration in power, the whole nation will be shut down. I just wonder if he wants our soldiers out of the wars and at home to do his bidding.

If an entire state secedes then the cities inside that state secede also. They may not like but they will have to do their duty. If they riot (ala NY 1863) then that riot will be crushed. Lincoln showed us how to do that.

[central_va]

But eventually I realized that the government bequeathed to us by Jefferson, Madison and the boys doesn't really exist anymore. So I went looking to find out how it ended; and it didn't take long to zero in on Saint Lincoln.

You are releasing your inner rebel. Real torment begins when you actually become secesh, for that mental condition has but one cure. Welcome.

[central_va]

Lee's army was in Pennsylvania for less than two weeks.

You want to back that whopper up? CS Cavalry was patrolling PA in May of 1863, 2 months before the first day.

[Louis Foxwell]

Begs the question. An industrialized North was imposing suffocating tariffs on an agrarian South. The South had no choice but to secede or be destroyed by the imposition of strangling taxation. Slavery was in the mix but it was never motivational on either side.

[Nowhere Man]

For the Southerners to have aligned themselves on the side of the Rothschilds and English mercantilists against Lincoln was entirely similar to somebody aligning with the English in the revolutionary war. You can't really expect a whole lot of mercy or sympathy when you do stuff like that.

I can't blame the South for doing that, when you're at war and when your back is against the wall, you try looking for allies to support you. Of course your allies or potential allies might have motives or reasons of their own to help you. I know during the American Revolution, France and Spain helped us, they were beaten by the British and wanted their pound of flesh, helping us achieved that goal.

Finland did the same thing in World War II against the Soviets. I have a friend in Sweden, born in Finland and migrated to Sweden, whose grandfather fought alongside the Nazis against the Soviets. Finland did a good job of handling the Soviets but needed some help and Germany extended her hand in assistance. I know when your back is against the wall, many times you would accept help first and asked questions later. Still, getting back to the subject of this article, Finland did tell the Germans to not harm any of their Jews and many Finnish Jews fought well against the Soviets.

The South was in the same boat, they needed to be able to stave off the North as well as they can, if they were more successful, perhaps they would have had more allies. Word has it that if the south won Gettysburg, the British were likely to step in and either give aid to the South or at least help broker a deal between the two countries to stop the war and let each go its own way. If I may wargame a bit, if I was the South, I'd look for allies anywhere I can, if it meant survival, had Red China and the USSR existed then, I would probably seek their aid since those were the rival powers. The bad thing is they they might want something in return that I would not want to do or give up.

[Nowhere Man]

Ahhh, no. You see, now we have all the guns. While the north was busy disarming themselves we were busy arming ourselves. And the north is probably outnumbered because they have aborted all their babies. And of course gay men are probably too busy worrying about decorating and fashion to fight a war.

With the exception of the gang bangers, the North will not have as much of an army as the South of today.

[wendy1946]

I can't blame the South for doing that, when you're at war and when your back is against the wall, you try looking for allies to support you.

You have the time sequence in that one backwards. The wrong allies came first and then the civil war.

[Louis Foxwell]

You are releasing your inner rebel. Real torment begins when you actually become secesh, for that mental condition has but one cure. Welcome.

And a ribald welcome from my quarter.

What a delightful thread: cornering trolls, slandering statists, unfrocking revisionists, bringing light to dark minds.

These are the joys of freeperhood.

[justiceseeker93]

And some historians suggest that a major factor was Grant's father (in law?) who was earning beaucoup dollars trading in cotton in partnership with a practitioner of you know what religion. If you want to shut down pops trading, barring Jews would have been a good way to do it.

Yes, I had heard about that before. If that were the case, Grant had a dysfunctional relationship with his father.

There is a duplicity in the author's overstating antisemitism among the Union generals and neglecting to mention that Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest later founded the Ku Klux Klan. Plus, while he talks about Union savagery in comparison with the gentlemanly Confederate soldier, he doesn't mention the decadent conditions in the notorious prisoner of war camps, such as Andersonville.

[central_va]

It's amazing what they teach pointed headed little Yankees up there as fact. The doctrine they teach, "the South was a bunch of racists and duped rednecks fighting for slavery. They deserved everything we gave 'em."

Does anyone doubt the without the South, the North would be a full fledged Marxist country by now? Somebody give me an amen.