Anybody watching the Civil War on PBS this week?

[Dunkopf]

Speculation is so fun isn't it? I am glad to hear that the Confederacy was actually a separate country from the USA. I always though it kind of sucked that we were fighting our own country men. Knowing that they were actually from a different country makes me feel better. Without intervention from the USA the country to the south would have kept slaves for quite a while. The mechanical cotton picker wasn't developed until around 1913. I know they had the cotton gin much earlier than that and it really helped a lot. Probably why some of the more morally enlightened southerners were willing to release their slaves.

Not much use debating another country invading the USA in our current state. It would be much more interesting to debate the possibility of invasion if each state was responsible for maintaining their own militia.

 

[woodmort]

Quote:
Actually the subject of this thread was whether anyone was watching the Civil War on PBS last week. It was hijacked a long time ago.

 

[Robo]

This beats watching a movie by a long shot.

 

[KristyHall]

Quote:
Actually the subject of this thread was whether anyone was watching the Civil War on PBS last week. It was hijacked a long time ago.

how was the movie? i'm sorry I missed it

 

[Robo]

Quote:
So you're saying the 90% of the Confederacy who didn't own slaves, nor intended to died so that 10-12% of their fellow southerners could keep slaves??? It WAS about states rights, but Slavery was part of states rights, only to around 10% of southeerners though... The main reason they left is because they wanted to have a voice and power. Northern states could elect a president without the cannidate winning a single southern state. The prime example is Lincoln. He ILLEGALLY kept this glorious union together, want examples???

 

[Dunkopf]

Is that a new concept or something? Soldiers dying over the wishes of a select few. Right now the entire country dances to the tune played by 2% of our population. The POTUS can still get elected without any votes from the southern states. They always call the election with most of the southern states not counted. Has something to do with population centers. They still had 2 Senators per state and of course their slaves counted as 3/5ths each for representatives. I guess they didn't know back then that you could control the whole country with a minority in both houses and a POTUS from the opposing party.

 

[Robo]

Confederate soldiers chose to fight for states rights, but to some states rights meant slavery. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In this case states rights is the beauty. States rights meant freedom of choice to some and to a select few that meant freedom to keep slaves... There is no way you can say that all of the Confederate soldiers fought solely for the purpose of slavery. Q9, I really enjoy reading your posts and I'm glad someone else doesn't see Lincoln as a "perfect pearl".

 

[AquaEyes]

Quote:
So you're saying the 90% of the Confederacy who didn't own slaves, nor intended to died so that 10-12% of their fellow southerners could keep slaves??? It WAS about states rights, but Slavery was part of states rights, only to around 10% of southeerners though... The main reason they left is because they wanted to have a voice and power. Northern states could elect a president without the cannidate winning a single southern state. The prime example is Lincoln. He ILLEGALLY kept this glorious union together, want examples???

There's a social aspect that's not being addressed. By maintaining a legal class for slaves, there would always be someone "lower" than the poorest of the free whites. That social system was what many people who didn't own slaves deemed worthy enough as a reason to go to war. You may think this makes no sense, but recall the struggle involved to remove the "untouchable" class from the Indian caste system. I'm not saying this was the major motivation, but making the claim that the majority of southerners didn't own slaves and so "why would they bother protecting slavery?" ignores that concept. If suddenly there was no legal class of people lower than the poorest of the free whites, then everyone moved one step closer to the bottom of the social scale. Slavery was a way of life for more than the slaves and slave owners. This is offered as a social explanation for the proliferation of racist groups "keeping the blacks in line" in the south after the war.

That being said, the war was undeniably terrible, and I'd love to be able to wave a magic wand and make it so it didn't happen. But it did. And in this conflict, one side won. And one of the spoils of victory is getting to tell your side of the story. That's just how it is (how would European settlement of this continent been told if the Native Americans were able to destroy the colonists?). But, having happened as it has, the country (and the world) is better off as one USA than as two countries. Think of later international conflicts and see how they'd have panned out if there wasn't one USA. What if the North and South (as two independent nations) took different sides in WWI or WWII? How would the the Cold War have ended?

I applaud the makers of documentaries because they bring history (or science, or whatever) alive and engender further learning by their viewers. Growing up, I'd seen countless documentaries on WWII because my mother's side of the family came here from Germany shortly after the war ended, and talking about the war was a "family taboo" among the people who actually lived through it. I found out why when I did a recorded interview for a high school project. Yes, what you see on the documentaries was true, but there was stuff you don't see that was described in detail to me by them (not getting into it here, but let's just say that American troops weren't angels when they were in Germany, but war is war, and being the nice guy isn't going to win the battle).

There's really no pleasant way to show war.

:-/

 

[AquaEyes]

Quote:
Hmmm....does that include the Confederacy during the war that this thread references?

 

[KristyHall]

Quote:
So you're saying the 90% of the Confederacy who didn't own slaves, nor intended to died so that 10-12% of their fellow southerners could keep slaves??? It WAS about states rights, but Slavery was part of states rights, only to around 10% of southeerners though... The main reason they left is because they wanted to have a voice and power. Northern states could elect a president without the cannidate winning a single southern state. The prime example is Lincoln. He ILLEGALLY kept this glorious union together, want examples???

There's a social aspect that's not being addressed. By maintaining a legal class for slaves, there would always be someone "lower" than the poorest of the free whites. That social system was what many people who didn't own slaves deemed worthy enough as a reason to go to war. You may think this makes no sense, but recall the struggle involved to remove the "untouchable" class from the Indian caste system. I'm not saying this was the major motivation, but making the claim that the majority of southerners didn't own slaves and so "why would they bother protecting slavery?" ignores that concept. If suddenly there was no legal class of people lower than the poorest of the free whites, then everyone moved one step closer to the bottom of the social scale. Slavery was a way of life for more than the slaves and slave owners. This is offered as a social explanation for the proliferation of racist groups "keeping the blacks in line" in the south after the war.

That being said, the war was undeniably terrible, and I'd love to be able to wave a magic wand and make it so it didn't happen. But it did. And in this conflict, one side won. And one of the spoils of victory is getting to tell your side of the story. That's just how it is (how would European settlement of this continent been told if the Native Americans were able to destroy the colonists?). But, having happened as it has, the country (and the world) is better off as one USA than as two countries. Think of later international conflicts and see how they'd have panned out if there wasn't one USA. What if the North and South (as two independent nations) took different sides in WWI or WWII? How would the the Cold War have ended?

I applaud the makers of documentaries because they bring history (or science, or whatever) alive and engender further learning by their viewers. Growing up, I'd seen countless documentaries on WWII because my mother's side of the family came here from Germany shortly after the war ended, and talking about the war was a "family taboo" among the people who actually lived through it. I found out why when I did a recorded interview for a high school project. Yes, what you see on the documentaries was true, but there was stuff you don't see that was described in detail to me by them (not getting into it here, but let's just say that American troops weren't angels when they were in Germany, but war is war, and being the nice guy isn't going to win the battle).

There's really no pleasant way to show war.

:-/

well said