A curiosity about the South, for people who live here

[BabylonHoruv]

But the idea is the same...Whenever you hear "state's rights", it means "We want the power to fuck over residents in our states in one manner or another."  I have NEVER seen an exception to this.

weed legalization.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

But the idea is the same...Whenever you hear "state's rights", it means "We want the power to fuck over residents in our states in one manner or another."  I have NEVER seen an exception to this.

weed legalization.

legal weed fucks you over.

i mean up. sorry.

[E.O.T.]

People in The South were idiots.  Not surprising really, given their idea of a strategy was "threatening, then direct military attack on a nation with more money, greater population and greater industrial output" than they had.

Obviously anyone who thought that was a good idea probably really thought they could get away with seceding with no consequences, either.  Sure, nice in theory, but ignores the practicality of the situation, which is those with more guns gets to make the rules.  Also ignores the history of the USA directly after founding, with The Whisky Rebellion, Shays Rebellion etc

ARE YOU

          drunk, as you said you'd be? cause this is one of the few truly bone headed things i've ever read by you. especially the first part

SORRY AM I

                 not typing slow enough?

OOWWW!!

          that was an uncharacteristic post for you, it reads more opinion than having any real substance.

AND

          no matter how fast you type, i can still get through the whole thing if someone holds my hand. except i have a drink in one and my cock in the other, so it may take longer than expected.

[E.O.T.]

Of course the south won. They were fighting for freedom, which is always the right thing to do - it was a moral victory.

Raw and stinking bullshit.  They were fighting for a static aristocracy.

They were fighting for the freedom to determine how to run their own economy and government. You can't really say that someone has the God-given right to pursue happiness, and then turn around and say "Well, but only if your method of pursuing happiness doesn't include human trafficking." These were honest, Christian farmers being faced with the possibility of being unable to leave their workforce to their children. Similarly, being forced allow illiterate non-citizens with no stake in the country to cast votes defeats the entire purpose of democracy - it's not self-determination if an outside power is manipulating the voting population to  its own ends.

It's not Freedom if you can't abuse it.

I'm leaving this thread now, out of sheer depression brought on by watching two supposed bipeds defend/support this sort of shit.

WHICH IS EXACTLY

          why you need to stay and this thread needs to happen. vex and ga are doing an outstanding job, imo, in bringing a voice of reason to this issue. the very fact that most immediate reaction to any of this underlines the idea that people from the south are not people, but some kind of sub human, demands this thread to exist. nigel brought it out in point, the issues connected to the south and the confederacy  are cloaked in so much womp that even incredibly intelligent folks have only frothing response to all of it. this is important dialogue.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The North had the industrial output, the money and the population.  "Will" is easy enough to conjure up, once a war is started, those tangibles are far more critical for success.  The South may have thought they could force concessions with a limited campaign, but, clearly, they were wrong.  Once you start a war, when it finishes is not up to you anymore.

The North had twenty million white citizens.  The South had six.  The North had much more immigration, and could rely on black troops as well, a choice the South did not make until the very end of the war.  The North had over 110,000 manufacturing establishments, the South only 18,000.  The entire South only produced 36,700 tons of pig iron - Pennsylvania alone produced 580,000 tons. New York State's economy was as large as Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi combined. 

This meant the South was outnumbered, could not rely on its economic strength for protracted campaigns, its railway system could not be maintained and it could not produce as many weapons as the North.  Land, cotton and slaves are not a great basis for an economy, so international banks were not willing to lend.  European powers had no interest in supporting yet another competitor in the cotton market, and were more concerned about events in Europe anyway. 

The South could never overrun the North, not with such imbalances.  Their only viable strategy was to drag out the war as to show to the North that it should abandon its claims to try and coerce the South - over slavery, or secession - and let them tire of war.  But that meant, unavoidably, a long-term conflict, which, as mentioned above, played to the Union's strengths.

The South wasn't planning on "overrunning" the North. They didn't need to; they were in a defensive position. What they were banking on was the North not being willing to go to great expense and suffer major casualties in order to retain power over the South... in short, they thought that they could defend themselves and that the North wouldn't consider them worth the cost of full-blown war. They were wrong.

[Golden Applesauce]

I'm kind of surprised at the way people buy Civil War history exactly as packaged, and how quick they are to make the assume any defense of the South is evidence of racism. I guess the campaign to equate the two has been pretty successful for it to infect a group of people deeply distrustful of authority. I still think it's artificial, though.

How it's packaged depends a lot on which state you were in for basic schooling. In Tennessee, you hear more people loudly making the argument that flying the Confederate flag has nothing to do with slavery/racism than you hear people saying it's insensitive and anachronistic, and more than a couple of my elementary/middle school teachers (I changed schools a lot in primary school, and somehow always managed to land on leading up to the civil war period, didn't get to anything post-Reconstruction until highschool/college) took great pains to point out all of the things about the Civil War which weren't about slavery.* You had to arrive at the Civil War = Slavery conclusion by wondering what prompted all of those suspiciously specific denials.

There's a lot of pride involved in remembering the war. The Confederates had their share of war heroes, and almost any white Southerner can trace his family back to the Confederate Army if he tries hard enough. Telling people that they can't be proud of their family history is a non-starter. Seceding is viewed as ultimate expression of freedom & democracy, and therefore American and patriotic, even though it actually, literally divides the country in half. Like how liberals maintain that burning the flag in protest is an activity that can only happen with First Amendment rights, which makes it a uniquely American and therefore patriotic tradition. Weirdly, almost nobody believes both things at the same time. You'd think there'd be greater overlap between people who burn the official flag and people who fly alternative flags...

*Did you know that there were black soldiers fighting for the Confederacy? That most white people didn't own slaves? That many freed slaves could be considered worse off immediately after being freed? That there were black soldiers fighting for the Confederacy? That Lincoln only freed the slaves for re-captured Confederate states, as a military tactic? That the factories up North had even more dangerous working conditions than Southern slaves, because the owners had no monetary stake in their employees lives? DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE WERE BLACK SOLDIERS WHO FOUGHT FOR THE CONFEDERACY? DEFINITELY AT LEAST TEN, MAYBE MORE.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am really surprised how many people here actually believe that the Civil War was about slavery. And Thanksgiving was about indians and pilgrims cooperating and sitting down to dinner together.

Sorry guys, but although there are valid perspectives on either side, Vex has done his homework. The war wasn't about great justice, it was about keeping the union together for economic reasons.

I am not arguing why the North fought to keep the South, but rather why the South chose to secede.

There were two somewhat separate motivations in play.

Abolition was the red-flag issue of the day, but ultimately it was primarily symbolic of the increasing culture clash and discontent of the South with Federal control. If it hadn't been slavery, it very likely would have been some other hot-button issue. For the most part people tend to view the "State's rights" argument as nothing but a red herring to draw attention away from the issue of slavery, but I think it was the other way around, with Southern politicians absolutely aware of the decreasing viability of slavery as an economic driver, and using it as a fulcrum for gaining leverage with the conservative families who were already starting to resent the pressures of change and wanted a scapegoat and an enemy, which was handed to them in the form of Federal interference.

Pretty much exactly the way the current immigration issues are handed to conservatives who want a scapegoat for the economic pressures they're facing, so they don't have to stare down the barrel at the reality that the system they advocate fucked them over.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

But the idea is the same...Whenever you hear "state's rights", it means "We want the power to fuck over residents in our states in one manner or another."  I have NEVER seen an exception to this.

Living where I do, I tend to hear the exact opposite a lot. Fuck the Feds coming in here and busting up our family marijuana farms, telling us we can't have death with dignity, and trying to block our socialized health care! Ever hear of Cascadia?

Secessionism is alive and well in the Northwest, and it's not what you might think it is.

[Cain]

The South wasn't planning on "overrunning" the North. They didn't need to; they were in a defensive position. What they were banking on was the North not being willing to go to great expense and suffer major casualties in order to retain power over the South... in short, they thought that they could defend themselves and that the North wouldn't consider them worth the cost of full-blown war. They were wrong.

Which is exactly my point.  They weren't planning on overrunning the north and were not in a position to do so.  Which means, ultimately, all they were doing is needling the nation with the right demographic, economic and historical-political mix to be able to invade and successfully occupy them.  Not to mention the whole "rally around the flag" effect that military action tends to create.

For the North, the costs of a fully blown war were already much lower than they would be for the South.  In such a situation, the vast power disparity needs to be taken into account, because what one side considers reasonable costs and balances will not be the same as what the other side considers them to be.  Wars tend to escalate once fighting starts, and descalation is both hard and rare.  By escalating, the South was playing with fire, and they got burnt.  No different to the Japanese trying to knock America out of the Pacific, except, you know, the Japanese actually had an ocean between them and America, which led them to think they would gain some kind of spatial advantage.  The South had a direct border.

Oh, and Japan got nuked.  Though if America policymakers want to retroactively nuke Florida for its past crimes, I'm sure no-one would complain much.

[Cain]

OOWWW!!

          that was an uncharacteristic post for you, it reads more opinion than having any real substance.

Unlike your reply to me, which was just full of substance and not at all a random ad hominem backed up by a gaping void of silence.

[P3nT4gR4m]

But the idea is the same...Whenever you hear "state's rights", it means "We want the power to fuck over residents in our states in one manner or another."  I have NEVER seen an exception to this.

weed legalization.

Allowing me to do something is exactly the same in principle as not allowing me to do something, ie it's acting as if they have some kind of fucking say in what I do. It's bullshit. It's sticking their nose in where it's not welcome. It's oppression. It's downright fucking rude and I support anyone who takes it upon themselves to destroy them. My liberty means more to me than their life.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

But the idea is the same...Whenever you hear "state's rights", it means "We want the power to fuck over residents in our states in one manner or another."  I have NEVER seen an exception to this.

weed legalization.

Allowing me to do something is exactly the same in principle as not allowing me to do something, ie it's acting as if they have some kind of fucking say in what I do. It's bullshit. It's sticking their nose in where it's not welcome. It's oppression. It's downright fucking rude and I support anyone who takes it upon themselves to destroy them. My liberty means more to me than their life.

Just because you approve of a States Rights action doesn't mean it isn't a States Rights issue. The argument is the same: "States have the sovereign authority to pass this law, even if it violates Federal law or contradicts laws in other States."

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The South wasn't planning on "overrunning" the North. They didn't need to; they were in a defensive position. What they were banking on was the North not being willing to go to great expense and suffer major casualties in order to retain power over the South... in short, they thought that they could defend themselves and that the North wouldn't consider them worth the cost of full-blown war. They were wrong.

Which is exactly my point.  They weren't planning on overrunning the north and were not in a position to do so.  Which means, ultimately, all they were doing is needling the nation with the right demographic, economic and historical-political mix to be able to invade and successfully occupy them.  Not to mention the whole "rally around the flag" effect that military action tends to create.

For the North, the costs of a fully blown war were already much lower than they would be for the South.  In such a situation, the vast power disparity needs to be taken into account, because what one side considers reasonable costs and balances will not be the same as what the other side considers them to be.  Wars tend to escalate once fighting starts, and descalation is both hard and rare.  By escalating, the South was playing with fire, and they got burnt.  No different to the Japanese trying to knock America out of the Pacific, except, you know, the Japanese actually had an ocean between them and America, which led them to think they would gain some kind of spatial advantage.  The South had a direct border.

Oh, and Japan got nuked.  Though if America policymakers want to retroactively nuke Florida for its past crimes, I'm sure no-one would complain much.

You have to keep in mind that America's FUCK NO, DO AS WE SAY nature was not yet established, and the South had no historic evidence that the North would launch a full-scale invasion in order to  maintain control. Like I said, they were banking on simply not being worth the trouble. That, however, was essentially the event that clearly identified what would become America's militaristic base nature. Of course it seems stupid in hindsight; we now have a lot of history that clearly highlights how the USA reacts to any opposition. But at the time, that was merely a possible reaction, and not the obvious and inevitable reaction we know it is today.

What I'm trying to highlight by saying that the South wasn't planning on "overrunning" the North is that the South wasn't invading; they were defending. You do not "overrun" your opposition when you are defending in a ground battle; you hold your own. It generally requires fewer soldiers in a ground battle to hold a defense than it does to launch an offense. So yes, the Union had enough soldiers to overrun the Confederate defenses, and they did, but the South was not "stupid" in strategizing that their defensive advantage and overall political position was enough of a deterrent that the Union would not send hundreds of thousands of soldiers to die in order to retain control of them.

In discussions of the South and the Confederate flag and racism and the Civil War, I think that it's useful to mentally treat them as a conquered nation, because that is essentially what they are. At this point, I strongly suspect that their heavily entrenched racism has been deeply exacerbated by their status as a conquered nation, because slavery was the divisive issue-du-jour that has been flagged as being central to the war, so race relations in the South have been inextricably culturally linked to being conquered.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

It's probably also prudent to keep in mind that the Confederate leadership really didn't in any way entertain the slightest inkling of a possibility that, had they won the war, Blacks would ever have anything resembling equality. Their VP's speech shortly after the adoption of their permanent Constitution made numerous references to the prevailing American Christian theology that the Blacks' color was imposed on them as a curse and that they were divinely designated to be eternally subservient to whites. In many ways the Confederate government really was the "Based on Christianity" outfit that many Christians think the US Government is. Maybe they're confused and think the US Government is actually in Richmond.

Anyway, had the outcome of the war been reversed, or even if it had never happened at all and the South was allowed to simply secede "in peace," it's no doubt that it would have given renewed strength and longevity not only to slavery itself but to the cultural and religious divisions between Whites and Blacks. The road from there to equality for minorities in the CSA would have had an entirely different character from the one we ended up with, and there are too many variables to know for sure how it would have played out. But it would have played out in some way, and I think that struggle would not only have nullified much of the entrenched racism from the bottom up rather than from the top down, it would have also neutralized much of the right-wing religious extremism that pervades American politics in the process.

[Cain]

Actually, the United States had a long history of not accepting other powers in its considered sphere of influence and using military force to drive them out or force them into an overall weaker strategic position.  In the decade before the Civil War, the American military saw action in the Ottoman Empire, Japan, Argentina, Nicaragua, China, Fiji, Uruguay, Panama, Paraguay and Mexico.  Almost all of these actions were either to defend American commerical interests or punitive expeditions.

And yes, the South were stupid in thinking their defensive posture was enough to deter the North.  Clearly and obviously.  Even beyond the historical record, it was not a reasonable proposition to make at the time because of the aforementioned advantages held by the Union and the noted patterns of behaviour by the American military in the decade before.  A military power that sent ships to punish Fijians and broke open Japan is not going to be deterred by an agrarian society with a much lower military potential because of a few successful raids.

The facts are, they were the weaker party from the start, and they were inviting the kind of conflict which played to the strengths of the Union.  If that isn't stupid, I might as well leave this thread now, because I can't think of a better way to define the word.