Poll: If You Fought In The American Civil War, Who Would You Fight For?
- Thread starter hippykiller
- Start date
If you're choosing sides, you're probably going to be volunteering for the South. The Union Army was pretty much all conscripts. I picked the South just because I'd have a better chance of surviving; both sides were kind of fucked up ideologically. Remember it wasn't so much about slavery as a test of just how federated the US was.
South
*The EP was nothing more than political grandstanding, banning slavery in an area where people aren't following your laws at all. It would be like Russia making a law that banned wine in France.
** I blame guilt for helping the slave trade get outside of africa and the middle east.
Side note: Lincoln was a **** who was planning on sending every slave he could get his hands on back to Africa, where they would more than likely wind up right back in slavery or dead, people tend to forget that the slaves were slaves long before they went to America.
Don't be silly, everyone knows the war was all about those darling africans, cause that's what the winners of the war said after they won. Nevermind the fact that being slaves in America was still a hell of a lot better than the choices they had back then, it was be slaves in africa/the middle east/the caribbean, where the indentured servitude generally didn't last too long because you were dead after a few months. Also, it's not like the Emancipation Proclamation* was nothing more than a political ploy to keep the British from sending the South aid because it's hard to maintain the Worlds Greatest Navy[sub][sub]TM[/sub][/sub] when you don't have cotton for your canvas sails, which the Brits happened to get most of from the south. But alas, the abolitionist movement was fairly popular with Great Britain** and the ploy worked. But yes, back on track, it was all about slaves, which is why the Union allowed border states like Maryland to keep their slaves so they didn't out and out join the Confederacy.US Crash Fire said:
*The EP was nothing more than political grandstanding, banning slavery in an area where people aren't following your laws at all. It would be like Russia making a law that banned wine in France.
** I blame guilt for helping the slave trade get outside of africa and the middle east.
Right, how dare the South not use child labor like the oh so cultured North.Blatherscythe said:
Humanitarian reasons? Really? You do know the northern armies were essentially the invading force and killed civilians, and burned towns and villiages whilst stealing everything that wasn't nailed down, right?Blatherscythe said:
Side note: Lincoln was a **** who was planning on sending every slave he could get his hands on back to Africa, where they would more than likely wind up right back in slavery or dead, people tend to forget that the slaves were slaves long before they went to America.
Wow, someone should have told that to the freedmen fighting for the Confederacy. It might have taken a while, because there were well over 50 thousand of them.Grand_Arcana said:
I'm going to be completely serious for the first time in this post, and point this out. The time near the end of and after the civil war was right when most of the shit that industrialized farming was being invented, and made it cheaper to own machines than humans for work. Now, if the South had willingly given up slavery instead of having a massive war that killed a shitload of people, do you think the anger, racism, and resentment that Southerners had towards blacks over the years would have existed?Icehearted said:
My understanding is that the Yankees couldn't march north, so they marched south. If the Union cared so much about slavery, why were things so bad for the slaves for the next century? It seems like an excuse, just like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the excuse for WWI. I would gladly fight for the south, although that general was an idiot.
You'll have to cite this, Daystar. Not because I don't necessarily believe you, simply out of curiosity.Daystar Clarion said:
And I'd have to say the North because the Southern economic system was dependent on slavery to stay profitable and I'd be willing to fight against the propagation of such a system.
The South!
Downtrodden farmers, retarded kids from Richmond, aimless miners, everyman who had nothing to loose, defiant to the last!
Plus I could sing these songs.
So I like American folk music OK!? You have a problem!?
I feel like I have an association with the South. I come from a pretty backwards, conservative rural region, and I get the piss taken by slick city fucks, so I can feel an empathy by the South and their heritage. Plus I respect their defiance!
Downtrodden farmers, retarded kids from Richmond, aimless miners, everyman who had nothing to loose, defiant to the last!
Plus I could sing these songs.
So I like American folk music OK!? You have a problem!?
I feel like I have an association with the South. I come from a pretty backwards, conservative rural region, and I get the piss taken by slick city fucks, so I can feel an empathy by the South and their heritage. Plus I respect their defiance!
Racism has never exclusively been about the anger of lost labor, I assure you. I fully believe that southerners by and large regarded my people as little more than livestock they could occasionally rape or murder without penalty, unless of course the livestock they chose to rape or murder happened to belong to someone else.UltraParanoia said:
Lots of reasons why we ended up going from slavery to segregation, some especially ignorant beliefs, remarkably, permeate our culture (I'm American) to this day. I sincerely doubt that industrialization/modernization/invention/etc would have changed the fact that for many white Americans (not exclusively the southerners), black people were little more than animals mimicking their masters.
The animosity went way deeper than simple labor/cultural differences. I am curious as to how things would have turned out for us had slavery been voluntarily relinquished by the south. Perhaps the Klan might not have been considered necessary considering the "negro menace" would not have been a matter of rebellion. I'd also wonder if segregation would have ended differently. Interesting to think about.
Yeah, but I doubt the majority of Union troops gave two shits about the emancipation of the Afro-American peoples either.Zildjin81 said:
All I'm saying is that I feel more association with the Southerners than the Northerners of the United States of America, at the time of the Civil War OK? Maybe it's just the British tradition of rooting for the underdog.
And yeah maybe "slick city fucks" is sounds a bit provocative and unnecessary, I just prefer people from the country, they seem to have more time for people, and seem more caring. Based on personal experience of course. I'm pretty drunk, and this post took a while to compose, so I hope it now makes sense to you, and seems less idiotic than its precursor.
Believe what you will, and have a nice day
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.
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Sorry if I messed up the quoting with all that cutting.
Right now people want to act like The Civil War was about Slavery because it makes the entire thing seem a lot more pure, but it really was a relatively minor issue. A lot of things provoked the issue back and forth, but people tend to forget that The North was also extremely racist, and also about the economics of slavery itself.
People (I know there are many others besides me) argue the point because it's true. One of the problems with the whole "Civil War was about Slavery" thing is that it detracts from the real issues that caused the war, and also from parallels between what happened then and what is going on now. It's much like points made about how gray "World War II" actually was (in other threads) and how ruthless we were in order to win. One of the problems has always been the tendency for the victors to whitewash things after the fact, when the need for propaganda has passed.
It's hard to deal with, because how how deeply ingrained some messages are. Sort of like how you'll hear these huge rants in history class about how evil Hitler was, and given the impression that he somehow threatened the world with a tiny handfull of followers and everyone rose up against him to stop his near victory. You pretty much never hear about the propaganda involved (even if the Smithsonian has a whole section on it) or how he was an International man of the year. He pretty much managed to divide the human population of the globe which is why it was such a titanic war. You hear tons about The Holocaust, but very little about his economoics, industrial reforms, or how visionary he was in predicting the rise of the family car to the extent that it appeared. It's similar with The Civil War, because it's easier to say that it was about Slavery in retrospect, and point to things like the Lincon Memorial than it is to get into the dubious morality of a bunch of factory owners and traders basically trying to rob a bunch of farmers of their materials at gunpoint because they were overcharging, and then after their surrender in the war murdered most of them and decimated the regional culture and infrastructure.
The Civil War was not a conflict that pitted brother against brother (oftentimes literally) because of something straightforward. You indeed had people going from the North to defend The South, and people frm The South going North because of the actual issues being fought over... which among other things included the abillity of The Federal Goverment to dictate policy to states and force them to comply.
At any rate, this is getting repetitive, however if your interested I read a duology of sorts on the subject called (if I remember correctly) "The Life Of Johnny Reb" and "The Life Of Billy Yank" years ago wen I was in college. It was intended to deal with the war in a more accurate fashion than you learn in High School. Dealing with things from the perspective of how people on both sides lived BEFORE the war, how they made money, and what was going on in each area (as was documented) along with paper clippings and such apparently salvaged from when it was going on showing information as people would have received it, both including slavery hype, and most importantly not. In the end it was all about money and people's livelyhood. To Billy Yank it was about a bunch of greedy farmers overcharging for materials and reducing the amount of profit that would trickle down to him. To Johnny Reb it was about the right to charge what they wanted for the goods they themselves produced. The slave issue was used to build tension, but not really the focus.
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Apologies for the above rambling, on another point I will mention is that I think the the whole "Conservative" thing in the US is being overly simplified. There is more to it right now than just money. Conservatives are increasingly interested in moving the US away from being the endless White Knight, and becoming more competitive in the world, and promoting it's own interests. This is "scary" to many globally because a lot of people never really though about how "nice" the US was being compared to other world powers before them.
Not totally popular with the US of course due to our moral idealogy, but in a general sense I tend to agree with it more than I'm against it.
I see it sort of like this, there are only so many resources on the planet, and being so heavily overpopulated some of them are even facing potential depletion. The bottom line is that not everyone on the planet can enjoy a high standard of living, and like it or not it comes down to competition. One of the things that has been rocking the US economically (among others) is the way we have been attempting to ease the burden of other nations and cultures while at the same time maintaining our own standard of living, which the rest of the world has looked at with a degree of envy through the years. A lot of Americans having come to the conclusion (falsely) that this standard of living is something that will remain constant no matter what we do. As a result the US (wars aside) has become a bit more aggressive in recent years about it's own interests.
If you look back at the 1980s and such, there was a lot of discussion about how American corperations were having trouble competing internationally due to the moral standards placed on them, and how closely they were policed. Not being able to pay off bribes or politicians when such things were needed (and expected) in other countries for example. One of the things that fueled the 1980s "evil Japanacorp" stereotype was that the Japanese would do whatever was nessicary, where American business pretty much played with kid gloves. This has gradually changed, leading to more agressive American capitolists in the international marketplace, and a lot of foreign businesses slowly becoming worried. Yes, peoplc can talk about failing American businesses in things like steel, automotive manufacturing, and other things, but policy changes do not happen overnight. The big thing is that the US was hurt economically, but we're not going down quite the way a lot of people wanted to see globally.
Tensions are also increasing between the US and it's allies because of things like the EU where Europe has basically been hoping to see a transfer of world financial focus from Wall Street to the European Common Market. Something that is incidently not in the best interests of the US. Basically if that was to happen the US would lose a lot of what makes it a superpower. The EU has been "Good" for trade from a European perspective, but has also created a rival for the US.
Agree with me or not (it can all be argued, including my conclusions and such, the state of American business and overall strategy is highly debatable after all). The bottom line is that the world is becoming increasingly messed up, and there are many people who are very much in favor of the US acting just as selfishly as we are accused of. Combine that with tensions with China, our biggest allies becoming some of our biggest rivals, and other issues and you begin to see where the current conservative opinion is coming from on a lot of levels. I do not agree with it 100%, but I do tend to agree that the US needs to be a lot more assertive internationally, and with a lot of the rising problems with China and such I'm also increasingly militant.
-
Sorry if I messed up the quoting with all that cutting.
Right now people want to act like The Civil War was about Slavery because it makes the entire thing seem a lot more pure, but it really was a relatively minor issue. A lot of things provoked the issue back and forth, but people tend to forget that The North was also extremely racist, and also about the economics of slavery itself.
People (I know there are many others besides me) argue the point because it's true. One of the problems with the whole "Civil War was about Slavery" thing is that it detracts from the real issues that caused the war, and also from parallels between what happened then and what is going on now. It's much like points made about how gray "World War II" actually was (in other threads) and how ruthless we were in order to win. One of the problems has always been the tendency for the victors to whitewash things after the fact, when the need for propaganda has passed.
It's hard to deal with, because how how deeply ingrained some messages are. Sort of like how you'll hear these huge rants in history class about how evil Hitler was, and given the impression that he somehow threatened the world with a tiny handfull of followers and everyone rose up against him to stop his near victory. You pretty much never hear about the propaganda involved (even if the Smithsonian has a whole section on it) or how he was an International man of the year. He pretty much managed to divide the human population of the globe which is why it was such a titanic war. You hear tons about The Holocaust, but very little about his economoics, industrial reforms, or how visionary he was in predicting the rise of the family car to the extent that it appeared. It's similar with The Civil War, because it's easier to say that it was about Slavery in retrospect, and point to things like the Lincon Memorial than it is to get into the dubious morality of a bunch of factory owners and traders basically trying to rob a bunch of farmers of their materials at gunpoint because they were overcharging, and then after their surrender in the war murdered most of them and decimated the regional culture and infrastructure.
The Civil War was not a conflict that pitted brother against brother (oftentimes literally) because of something straightforward. You indeed had people going from the North to defend The South, and people frm The South going North because of the actual issues being fought over... which among other things included the abillity of The Federal Goverment to dictate policy to states and force them to comply.
At any rate, this is getting repetitive, however if your interested I read a duology of sorts on the subject called (if I remember correctly) "The Life Of Johnny Reb" and "The Life Of Billy Yank" years ago wen I was in college. It was intended to deal with the war in a more accurate fashion than you learn in High School. Dealing with things from the perspective of how people on both sides lived BEFORE the war, how they made money, and what was going on in each area (as was documented) along with paper clippings and such apparently salvaged from when it was going on showing information as people would have received it, both including slavery hype, and most importantly not. In the end it was all about money and people's livelyhood. To Billy Yank it was about a bunch of greedy farmers overcharging for materials and reducing the amount of profit that would trickle down to him. To Johnny Reb it was about the right to charge what they wanted for the goods they themselves produced. The slave issue was used to build tension, but not really the focus.
-
Apologies for the above rambling, on another point I will mention is that I think the the whole "Conservative" thing in the US is being overly simplified. There is more to it right now than just money. Conservatives are increasingly interested in moving the US away from being the endless White Knight, and becoming more competitive in the world, and promoting it's own interests. This is "scary" to many globally because a lot of people never really though about how "nice" the US was being compared to other world powers before them.
Not totally popular with the US of course due to our moral idealogy, but in a general sense I tend to agree with it more than I'm against it.
I see it sort of like this, there are only so many resources on the planet, and being so heavily overpopulated some of them are even facing potential depletion. The bottom line is that not everyone on the planet can enjoy a high standard of living, and like it or not it comes down to competition. One of the things that has been rocking the US economically (among others) is the way we have been attempting to ease the burden of other nations and cultures while at the same time maintaining our own standard of living, which the rest of the world has looked at with a degree of envy through the years. A lot of Americans having come to the conclusion (falsely) that this standard of living is something that will remain constant no matter what we do. As a result the US (wars aside) has become a bit more aggressive in recent years about it's own interests.
If you look back at the 1980s and such, there was a lot of discussion about how American corperations were having trouble competing internationally due to the moral standards placed on them, and how closely they were policed. Not being able to pay off bribes or politicians when such things were needed (and expected) in other countries for example. One of the things that fueled the 1980s "evil Japanacorp" stereotype was that the Japanese would do whatever was nessicary, where American business pretty much played with kid gloves. This has gradually changed, leading to more agressive American capitolists in the international marketplace, and a lot of foreign businesses slowly becoming worried. Yes, peoplc can talk about failing American businesses in things like steel, automotive manufacturing, and other things, but policy changes do not happen overnight. The big thing is that the US was hurt economically, but we're not going down quite the way a lot of people wanted to see globally.
Tensions are also increasing between the US and it's allies because of things like the EU where Europe has basically been hoping to see a transfer of world financial focus from Wall Street to the European Common Market. Something that is incidently not in the best interests of the US. Basically if that was to happen the US would lose a lot of what makes it a superpower. The EU has been "Good" for trade from a European perspective, but has also created a rival for the US.
Agree with me or not (it can all be argued, including my conclusions and such, the state of American business and overall strategy is highly debatable after all). The bottom line is that the world is becoming increasingly messed up, and there are many people who are very much in favor of the US acting just as selfishly as we are accused of. Combine that with tensions with China, our biggest allies becoming some of our biggest rivals, and other issues and you begin to see where the current conservative opinion is coming from on a lot of levels. I do not agree with it 100%, but I do tend to agree that the US needs to be a lot more assertive internationally, and with a lot of the rising problems with China and such I'm also increasingly militant.