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Why the sympathy for the South?
2/18/2003 | truthsearcher

Posted on 02/17/2003 5:53:30 PM PST by Truthsearcher

Why the sympathy for the South?


TOPICS: Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: abortion; civilwar; dixie; slavery
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To: thinktwice
"Jubal Early -- Almost took Washington after leading a lightning cavalry expedition up the Shenandoah Valley."

Early turned tail and ran when he saw the fortifications around DC were manned with desk clerks and stable boys.
41 posted on 02/17/2003 6:37:25 PM PST by Rebelbase
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To: Alberta's Child
True.

But if I may say so, that's a pretty innocuous gorwth of government power, relatively speaking. And one pretty arguably in the Constitution.

Especially given that without the transcontinental railroad, westward expansion would have significantly slowed and curtailed. Just as settlement of the Great akes would have been slowed or stymied without the Erie Canal, and southern settlement would have been stymied without federal intervention to displace the Cherokees and other Indian tribes.

In any case, the South's objection was not (save for a few bitter enders) to government promotion of a transcontinental railroad, as even you seem to recognize. What they hoped for was a southrn route, not a northern one - the main reason why then-Secretary of War Jefferson Davis marshalled through the Gadsden purchase in 1853.

As is so often the case, the argument over government largesse wasn't over curtailing it so much as to how to divvy it up.

42 posted on 02/17/2003 6:38:09 PM PST by The Iguana
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To: Alberta's Child
The role of the gold rush and in particular the comstock silver strike played a large part in the norths being able to fund the war, it was in reality a close thing.

anyway, didn't anyone ever watch "johnny Yuma".
43 posted on 02/17/2003 6:40:05 PM PST by tet68 (Jeremiah 51:24 ..."..Before your eyes I will repay Babylon for all the wrong they have done in Zion")
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To: truth_seeker; thinktwice
Britain outlawed slavery in the 1830s.

And our allies, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, outlawed slavery in 1962.

That is not a typo. 1962.
44 posted on 02/17/2003 6:42:35 PM PST by FreedomCalls (It's the "Statue of Liberty" not the "Statue of Security.")
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To: wirestripper
They went on to indenture thousands of Indians, called coolies.

Slavery was abolished in the British Empire under a ten year plan to allow owners of newly purchased slaves to get their money's worth. Slaves, however, often took to the hills to wait out the ten years.

Indentured servitude is one where the person sells himself into servitude for some set period; someone wanting their passage money to get to America, for instance.

45 posted on 02/17/2003 6:42:40 PM PST by thinktwice
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To: Hobsonphile
I concede the complexity of the Civil War period, but the Confederacy was no bastion of liberty.....

Neither was the nation whose first President was the slave owner whose portrait is on the One Dollar bills in your wallet and whose birthday we are celebrating today.

Why is it that the only Americans who bear the historical brunt of Political Correctness regarding slavery are those who defended their Southern homes between 1861 and 1865?


George Washington and one of his 316 slaves.

46 posted on 02/17/2003 6:44:58 PM PST by Polybius
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To: Truthsearcher
Why the sympathy for the South? Because we...."

There's your answer - because there's a bunch of Southerners on this board. What do you expect - for them to be self-loathing and celebrate General Grant's birthday???!

47 posted on 02/17/2003 6:45:57 PM PST by witnesstothefall
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To: Truthsearcher
Go here: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/wpahome.html and poke around. You'll get both perpectives first hand.
48 posted on 02/17/2003 6:46:13 PM PST by Abcdefg
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To: thinktwice
Indentured servitude is one where the person sells himself into servitude for some set period; someone wanting their passage money to get to America, for instance.

I don't think most of the indentured servants would tell a voluntary story.

Many were put into the system by the courts and anyone who could get paid for providing labor.

49 posted on 02/17/2003 6:46:19 PM PST by Cold Heat
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To: Truthsearcher
Tha civil war was fought on battlefields located in the southern states.

The victorious northern army raped, ravaged, and pillaged their way throughout the southlands.

I fail to understand northern attitudes of moral superiority, since it was mostly the yankees who thought it perfectly fine to commit genocide on red-men, since they were not truly human.

Before, during, and after the civil war, yankees continued to deny the humanity of native american indians.

It was not convenient to the cause of federalism, to recognise indigenous populations.It is not becoming now to rewrite history.

Slavery was not "invented" by the southern states of the USA.Even today, the northern states accept the slavery of illegal immigrants, because it is convenient, and financially advantagious for them to do so.

If and when the southern states try to seriously stop the importation of slave labor of illegal aliens,the northern states will again protest the loss of cheap labor,and refuse to pay the actual costs of food and supplies to their cities, once again.

Another civil war is brewing.The damn yankees will again be the instigators of it.

50 posted on 02/17/2003 6:49:45 PM PST by sarasmom (I will journey to the grave of Jimmy Carter in order to spit on it.May my journey be soon.)
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To: witnesstothefall; Truthsearcher
One only has to look at the color-coded Presidential election maps over the last two decades to realize that this nation probably would have been better off if the Union had lost the Civil War. LOL.
51 posted on 02/17/2003 6:50:13 PM PST by Alberta's Child
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To: willyboyishere
Genovese is an ex-Marxist; he's now a Roman catholic. And one of the best historians living.
52 posted on 02/17/2003 6:50:14 PM PST by docmcb
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To: Truthsearcher
I don't know about anyone else , but, I have 3 great grandfathers who fought in that war. Two for the south one for the north. None were slaveowners , just dirt farmers. I wish I could pick teir minds for reasons why. All indications are that it went deeper than slavery. One of those mysteries we'll never know for sure. I'm not ashamed of any one of them though
53 posted on 02/17/2003 6:51:22 PM PST by Damagro
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To: Truthsearcher
The dates are a clue to what you seek.

On 11-06-1860 Lincoln was elected president.

On December 20 1860, just a month later, South Carolina secedes.

Then on April 12, 1861 the first shot of the civil war was fired at Fort Sumter as the southern states were in rebellion against unfair taxation.

Then finally, on Sept 22, 1862 as as afterthought to further justify his war against the south, Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation nearly two years after South Carolina had seceded and over a year and half after the war between the states had begun.

Now you can begin to search for the truth.

54 posted on 02/17/2003 6:51:50 PM PST by takenoprisoner (stand for freedom or get the helloutta the way)
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To: John H K; Truthsearcher
they're basically pretending slavery didn't exist and the South was God's Paradise on Earth, etc.

I have never seen a post that denied that slavery existed in the South. If there is such a post, point us all to it.

The problem is that the southern bashers point fingers toward the South while ignoring that slavery existed in the northern states as well and STILL defend that their invasion of the South was to "end slavery."

55 posted on 02/17/2003 6:55:03 PM PST by PistolPaknMama (kaboom!)
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To: Alberta's Child
It's also worth noting that the Civil War harkens back to an era when people identified themselves first as residents of whatever state they lived in, and as Americans second.

How true. My dirt-poor farmer great-grandfather, his brothers, and cousins fought for the Confederacy, not because they owned slaves (they did not), but because they were Virginians, and their State, their home, had been invaded.

Imagine Utah being attacked by Colorado. For whatever reason. Would not the citizens of Utah defend their state?

56 posted on 02/17/2003 6:55:29 PM PST by Inyo-Mono
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To: Excuse_My_Bellicosity
So how did the North explain their use of slavery?

Well, in the case of the family of U.S. Grant, Mrs. Grant's slave "Black Julia" was needed to look after their son, Jesse Grant, when they visited Union Headquarters and the General and the Mrs. needed uninterrupted time for "marital relations".

57 posted on 02/17/2003 6:55:38 PM PST by Polybius
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To: Excuse_My_Bellicosity
Just as the red states today believe that the blue states are running things. Balkanization is still not the answer.
58 posted on 02/17/2003 6:59:55 PM PST by Let's Roll (Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.)
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To: Truthsearcher
Have you compared what the Confederacy said about importation of slaves in its Constitution with what the Union Constitution said at that time?

Article I, Sec. 9 of the Confederate Constitution:
1. The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.
2. Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy.

Article 1, Section 9 of the Union Constitution:

Clause 1: The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

59 posted on 02/17/2003 7:02:12 PM PST by PAR35
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To: Truthsearcher
Because most people are not able to recognize that two sides of an argument can both be wrong. We are used to finding the "bad guy" and, when we do so, immediately siding with his opponent, who must be on the side of angels.

As someone born, raised, and who has lived most of his life in the capital of the Confederacy, someone who can trace his family tree back to Civil War heroes and Civil War deserters, I will be the first to say that the Old South was not a perfect place. It had very good traits to a degree: it's independence, nobility, and hospitality (as well as its generals...who were unequalled in US history). It also contained the massive evil of slavery, and many men supported it for their own selfish reasons.

As for the Northern States, they also had many good attributes. And they also were perfectly willing to exploit men for their own profit. The few who did reject slavery (and it was a small number... read about it sometime) were able to do so because it did not affect their bottom line. They had other ways to exploit workers for their own gain. And Lincoln's destruction of the Constitution, and the subsequent expansion of the Federal government, has been a great evil indeed.

So, as I see it, those who argue for the South on FR minimize the issue of slavery so as to oppose the very real evil done to our Constitution, whereas the Northern arguers do the opposite. Obviously the folks who supported your side way back when couldn't have been just as bad as their enemies... could they?

Frankly, I think the whole thing is a waste of time. No one can gain a single scintilla of moral authority by siding with anyone in a conflict long gone, though many would like to do so. If you believe that somehow you are a better person because you romanticize the South, or the North (you listening, WhiskeyPapa?), then you are far too pitiful to be worth arguing with. It is as idiotic as arguing who was more rightfully the king of England in 1066AD: William of Normandy or Harold of England.

We are measured by the challenges we face TODAY, not by our positions on those long gone. Your stance on the upcoming War with Iraq says far more about your character than a hundred passionate defenses of Dixie or Lincoln. In fact, I think the desire to re-argue the past is a sign of a person who cannot face the present... or future. And they deserve our pity...

60 posted on 02/17/2003 7:09:35 PM PST by Charles H. (The_r0nin) (How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris? No one knows; it's never been tried...)
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