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This is the deep South. The whole region is decades behind the NE, Midwest, and the West. You can see this in the attitudes of the people, the education of the masses, and the cities' built form.
I don't think that's true at all. Look at all the corporate HQs and where investment is happening.
I do think that there are some people here who are definitely behind the times, and people who due to their upbringing were taught to think that the Confederacy was noble and stood for some type of important principle. It was not, and it did not. It was an agrarian economy built on the enslavement of other humans, fighting to retain that feudal system.
What is worse is that the vast majority of the men who fought for the south weren't even slave owners. They were poor and ignorant, and they got slaughtered over the idea that the south had the right to take the labor of others by force.
The Confederacy only existed during the Civil War, so you can't very well put all 250 years of atrocities on them just because they fought to keep something which was an American institution for centuries.
The Confederacy may have only existed officially for a few years in the 1860s, but it was a symbol for many years afterwards. The flag was used as a symbol of segregation and racism for many years...up to and including today.
You are in fact making my point. The Confederacy was a reaction to the growing political power of abolitionists and the pressure on the southern states over slavery. It had been building for years, but the "straw that broke the camel's back" was the election of Lincoln in 1860.
The south could not make its economy work without slavery, or at least not in the same manner. The war was an attempt to preserve their economic system....centered around slavery. Let's not try to re-write history and pretend it was about something else.
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Originally Posted by erick295
I'll point this out again: The US practiced slavery until the 1860s and segregation until the 1960s. If you believe fighting to defend it as the Confederacy did is worse than practicing it as the US did, then that's where we disagree.
First...the "US" did not practice slavery and segregation until the 1860s or the 1960s...the southern states...aka the Confederate States did. Slavery was outlawed by all the northern states by the late 1700s, at the birth of the United States. The south practiced slavery exclusively (since the independence and formation of the United States) and fought over it, so your point is factually incorrect and misguided. A couple of northern states still legally allowed slavery until the early 1800s (I believe Delaware was one), but in practice it was not done.
It was the southern states the forced the "3/5ths compromise" and the "Missouri Compromise" and many other constitutional and legal concessions to the slave owning south. As the north would no longer put up with slavery and the political power of abolitionists grew larger, the south was being threatened with being outvoted in Congress and subject to having the rug pulled out from under them economically.
Again...to try to say that the Civil War wasn't about southern slavery is to completely and utterly misunderstand history. Were there other minor causes and impacts...sure. Were there southerners who were fighting for their state and who didn't care about slaves...sure. Having said that, the key point was the impact of slavery on the economy of the south and the desire to preserve that system.
First...the "US" did not practice slavery and segregation until the 1860s or the 1960s...the southern states...aka the Confederate States did. Slavery was outlawed by all the northern states by the late 1700s, at the birth of the United States. The south practiced slavery exclusively (since the independence and formation of the United States) and fought over it, so your point is factually incorrect and misguided. A couple of northern states still legally allowed slavery until the early 1800s (I believe Delaware was one), but in practice it was not done.
this is not true. maryland, delaware, new jersey, and even the capitol, washington, DC, still had slaves at the beginning of the civil war.
Whoa. That really says it all, coming straight from the horse's mouth. What is the source of this information. Maybe all of the people who insist secession and the Civil War was not about slavery would be interested in learning more about these proclamations.
Oh, and how grotesque. Yuck.
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Originally Posted by Cameron H
I don't know anyone who claims that slavery was the only point of conflict between North and South. On the other hand, we know why the Confederate states seceded, because they dutifully recorded those reasons in their declarations and public pronouncements.
GEORGIA
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.
MISSISSIPPI
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
SOUTH CAROLINA
A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
TEXAS
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
And of course the Corner Stone Speech, by Alexander Stephens:
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
I thought you were contrasting the "United States" in the Civil War from the Confederate States. It's a given that the south had slaves...right?
When I said the US I didn't mean the North (although if I did it would be factual, as they still had slaves as late as the Civil War... abolition was gradual).
My point was that people who are offended by the Confederate flag should feel the same about US flags since the US is guilty of the very same sins (plus many others up to the present). It's strange that people are so selective with their sensitivity. It's like it doesn't matter what is done, just who does it and when.
I'll leave you with my original post: It's just a flag. For those who are bothered by it and especially those who take action against it, I'd suggest putting that energy toward a problem that actually affects people.
I don't know Saintmarks, if it is plausible to claim ancestors were not fighting to maintain the institution of slavery just bc they did not own slaves. How about all of the poor people who have no money who constantly side with republicans, which is largely much more beneficial and concerned with issues concerning more wealthy people. People pick up causes not directly in their interest all the time. Further, there may have been southerners fighting simply to maintain the status quo of presumed inferiority of all those not part of the majority group. Some ppl just like to feel superior and don't want anyone telling them different. I am not saying any of this applies to your ancestors but certainly must be the case for some bc the MAJORITY of white southerners did not have the money to own slaves yet the were all fighting in the Confederacy. Go figure. I liken this to poor ppl constantly voting republican.
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Originally Posted by Saintmarks
Erick, your posts are appreciated here for this fact: Over simplification of the history of the Civil War and the reason it came to be is something that makes me cringe whenever one of these subjects appear. Yes, the battle flag needs to be retired. But the sweeping generalizations of why it originally came to be are no help either.
You are precisely right that the USA legally held slavery up right up and into the Civil War. It wasn't until Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation that it was deemed illegal. The politics and economics and mindsets of the whole country are far less than noble on all sides of the Mason/Dixon line. To come with a 21st century mindset and claim it was all for slavery that the Civil War started is overly simplistic to the point of being trite.
I have several ancestors that were veterans of the CSA. I haven't gone back into the 18th century in the family tree to see if any were slave owners, but I cannot find any evidence of anyone in the four lines I have researched that owned slaves. Paternal grandfather's roots are in the Greenville/Easley SC area... hardly plantation country.... same for paternal grandmother's line from Cherokee County NC and for my maternal grandmother, oddly enough, Cherokee County, but the GA one. The only family line that (at the onset of the Civil War) would be most likely to have slaves was my maternal grandfather's line which is in Meriwether County. We still own land that once belonged to his forebears. My grandfather's grandfather, James Goode Sims is interred in the Union Baptist Cemetery and has a CSA veterans stone marking his grave. He nor his father owned slaves to the best of our research. Most of these were small farmers, teachers and preachers.
That these men fought and gave their lives for slavery and slavery alone when none of them owned any themselves doesn't make sense to me. To say slavery is THE reason the Civil War was fought doesn't begin to scratch the surface of what was going on in that day and time, both in the mindset of the individual and in the community at large. To be lectured that this is the only reason these men gave their lives is (looking for a phrase not to ruffle things any further).... less than scholarly, historically accurate and borders on being downright insulting.
Yes, this Confederate Battle Flag on a state sponsored plate is ludicrous. The OPs title is well taken. But I can't stand some of the comments that paint with such a broad brush. And with such thin paint.
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