Fair enough. I'm just struck by the fact that half of a country viewed possibly losing slavery as enough reason to secede.El Poncho said:
Poll: If You Fought In The American Civil War, Who Would You Fight For?
- Thread starter hippykiller
- Start date
I'm an Irish-American, and we would both be fighting on the union side buddy.hippykiller said:
A HUGE percentage of union soldiers were Irish, because of the influx of Irish immigrants to the east coast during the war, they were pretty much instantly drafted, off one ship, onto the other, and sent away to war. I'd even go as far as saying the North would have lost the war if it weren't for the Irish immigrants.
I hate the idea of government telling us how to live, but I also don't like slavery. However, at the time, we wouldn't have been able to find work anywhere else. I also may or may not be a member of the ARA.
hippykiller said:
I really have trouble believing the people here arguing that the American Civil War wasn't about slavery. Yes, there were the issues of states rights and economics, but both of those were somewhat abstract ideas that basically came to a head in the slavery issue. After all, as someone else already mentioned, the war started after a new state came into the Union as a no-slave state.Therumancer said:They were not, at least not really. Slavery was an issue, but mostly a verbal/academic one. States were a lot more independant then and while a lot was said between slave and non-slave states things more or less worked out.FranzTyphid said:The west.
y'know just to be difficult.
OTrobably the north because i think they were about abolishing slaves
The war was mostly fought for economic reasons, irregardless of what you might have heard. The bottom line is that "The South" produced a ton of raw materials like cotton, which were then shipped to "The North" for manufacturing and eventually shipping and trade. It was the age of the "Gentleman Farmer" with these guys living more or less like nobles with huge mansions, massive fields, and armies of slaves and workers producing material which they would sell at a massive profit. Of course there WERE poor familiies and farmers too, but basically a lot of the power, and indeed a lot of the money/material was in the hands of those Gentleman farmers.
In very simplistic terms the big issue was that the Northern states did not like the prices that the Southern states were demanding for raw material. After all the more they paid, the more expensive it was to produce goods to trade. It should also be noted that The North was *NOT* a group of modern day, progressive thinking liberals, they were VERY racist, and even if slavery was outlawed they still held what amounted to indentured servitude and ran sweat shops.
Goverment involvement in business interests lead to the divide. Slavery which was an issue under discussion was simply a blunt object to make things difficult and help generate sentiment on both sides. The bottom line was always about who had the grain, cotton, and other materials. The goverment pretty much got to the point where it was going to regulate pricing, and The South said "F@ck this, we're not going to accept that, and we're leaving."
A war happened, and the slaves were freed for political reasons, but also because they were a good weapon against The South. Given the power of the region, they really wanted to make sure it wouldn't "rise again" as the threat goes. By suddenly freeing the slaves who had noplace to go, you had large bands of hungry people (even if not inherantly violent) rampaging through the countryside looting, destroying, and doing whatever. It utterly decimated the infrastructure. What's more Northern Troops used their own recruited Blacks to committ acts of post-war terrorism, having them disguise themselves as slaves and make attacks on major holdings that remained, and killing people that were seen as being inconveinent. "Gone With The Wind" and "The Yankees are burning Tara" really doesn't do the time period justice.
The "liberation of the slaves" was pretty much one of the most ridiculously done things in history, and was intentional. No real effort was made to keep things organized.
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As for what side I'd be on, all I can say is that I'm not a man of the times. None of the politics involved represent anything I really believe in. Sure, I'm anti-slavery, but at the time that meant something far differant than what it does to me, as even the North were racist twits. In the end it was two groups of people fighting over money, both of whom were equally corrupt in their own way. The North won, so it gets to write the history books, build the monuments, and claim what the war was about.
In a purely pragmatic sense, my family has always been East Coast, so as a result I'd almost definatly have my money and interests invested over here, so I'd probably wind up supporting The Northern Side.
To American conservatives "freedom" only means "don't tell me what I can/can't do with my money". Everything else is essentially fair game.Noelveiga said:
ExactlyMR T3D said:
As a woman I wouldn't be allowed to take part in such manly things like fighting and war. So I abstain.
Yeah, It was also abolished in the empire 1833... just saying. It took the US a bit of time to catch up. My country actually helped black slaves get out of the US, although we weren't really a country back then..El Poncho said:
I voted north, just because, slavery is bad, Mmkay?
Yeah- the war wasn't about slavery. It was over whether you say "the United States ARE" or "the United States IS." It was about the power of the federal government over the power of the states.Agayek said:
I don't seem to recall anything in the Constitution about secession, and America would've fallen apart if the Confederacy hadn't been beaten back into line (this is NOT a stab at you, southerners- I may live in New Hampshire, but about half my family lives in Virginia). The North and South couldn't economically survive on their own- the northern states had all the manufacturing, but the south was still reeling in the dough through tobacco and cotton sales- so in my own humble opinion, the war was not at all silly.
I'd probably go for the North.
And not for the slavery thing either.
I just really don't like southern accents.
Getting to shoot people with really deep accents would be...fantastic to me.
:-D
Plus, I'm from Maryland, and the North had ABRAHAM LINCOLN!
And not for the slavery thing either.
I just really don't like southern accents.
Getting to shoot people with really deep accents would be...fantastic to me.
:-D
Plus, I'm from Maryland, and the North had ABRAHAM LINCOLN!