Quote:Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks and monuments are wrong.

Interesting WP article. I'm at work so I can't respond readily to this and the other thread I posted. Apologies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteveryt...ions_pop_b

Nice Op -Ed piece.

Why do apologist for the Union debate on emotion and not facts. ??

How can anyone alive today say the books are wrong. No one here was around to see those events.Folks are always rewriting History to serve Their own opinions. Another reason there are so many different teachings of the Bible. It's been rewritten to different interpretation countless times to be more PC.Im sure someday it will be changed again to show gay marriage for future generations to read.

(07-01-2015 11:09 AM)CardFan1 Wrote:  How can anyone alive today say the books are wrong. No one here was around to see those events.Folks are always rewriting History to serve Their own opinions. Another reason there are so many different teachings of the Bible. It's been rewritten to different interpretation countless times to be more PC.Im sure someday it will be changed again to show gay marriage for future generations to read.

actually, the bible is actually the same, and has stayed the same over time, but it is people's interpretations of what the bible said that leads to different denominations.

Very interesting and informative, but it takes the typical "either/or" route with most of the points if makes. i.e. The Civil War was about slavery therefore it couldn't have been about states' rights. The problem with that thinking is real life is never that black and white (forgive the pun); there were undoubtedly a variety of opinions about succession/civil war on both sides of the Mason/Dixon line.

Of course it was about states rights...to own slaves.

(07-01-2015 11:31 AM)Smaug Wrote:  Of course it was about states rights...to own slaves.

More like for states joining the union to have the right to choose to be a slave or free state.

Vermont...

Common sense will tell you that southerners did not take up arms to protect the rights of a fraction of one percent of extremely wealthy people in the south, including some blacks, to own slaves.

That is just plain stupidity.

It was about the economy, and the way the north was trading. Period.

(07-01-2015 11:09 AM)CardFan1 Wrote:  How can anyone alive today say the books are wrong. No one here was around to see those events.Folks are always rewriting History to serve Their own opinions. Another reason there are so many different teachings of the Bible. It's been rewritten to different interpretation countless times to be more PC.Im sure someday it will be changed again to show gay marriage for future generations to read.

Its a University of Vermont sociology professor. So the most liberal department in probably the most liberal state university in the nation.
And he's NOT a history professor.

He is right about one thing. Most of the authors who wrote about the Civil War at first were Southerners. But what Ken Burns (Yankee) or James McPherson (descendant of a Yankee general killed rallying the troops in the battle of Atlanta) write is mostly only different in tone than what Bruce Catton wrote. However, that difference in tone is interesting.

The guy is clueless about Kentucky. It has more Confederate monuments because it is a proud southern state. It did have more unionists. But that didn't mean their sympathies were with the north. They were with the union AND the south. Lincoln, Southern Democratic candidate Breckinridge and Confederate President Jeff Davis were all born in Kentucky.

The writer's explanations are just as simplistic as the ones he's trying to refute.

(07-01-2015 11:19 AM)moe24 Wrote:  Very interesting and informative, but it takes the typical "either/or" route with most of the points if makes. i.e. The Civil War was about slavery therefore it couldn't have been about states' rights. The problem with that thinking is real life is never that black and white (forgive the pun); there were undoubtedly a variety of opinions about succession/civil war on both sides of the Mason/Dixon line.

You could say that the Civil War was Confederate Gray!

(07-01-2015 11:58 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  Common sense will tell you that southerners did not take up arms to protect the rights of a fraction of one percent of extremely wealthy people in the south, including some blacks, to own slaves.

That is just plain stupidity.

It was about the economy, and the way the north was trading. Period.

Well a lot more than a fraction of one percent of the population owned slaves. Slave ownership wasn't about black and white. It was about green. NC wasn't a wealthy state but about 27% of the white population owned slaves. The percentage of slave owners would have been higher in many of the other slave holding states. For the record as far as I can tell all of my ancestors on my mother's side were slave owners and many if not all on my father's side.

There have been tens of thousands of books written on the Civil War. It was the single most complex socio-political event in US history. Thank God this person finally came along to boil it all down for us.

(07-01-2015 04:23 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  There have been tens of thousands of books written on the Civil War. It was the single most complex socio-political event in US history. Thank God this person finally came along to boil it all down for us.

For better and worse it defined us as a nation. No more important event occurred in our history.

(07-01-2015 04:29 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  

(07-01-2015 04:23 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  There have been tens of thousands of books written on the Civil War. It was the single most complex socio-political event in US history. Thank God this person finally came along to boil it all down for us.

For better and worse it defined us as a nation. No more important event occurred in our history.

Well I might argue that we're celebrating the most important event this Saturday. But that's just old conservative, out-of-touch, me.

(07-01-2015 11:58 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  Common sense will tell you that southerners did not take up arms to protect the rights of a fraction of one percent of extremely wealthy people in the south, including some blacks, to own slaves.

That is just plain stupidity.

I'd be careful when saying things like "common sense" and "just plain stupidity" when a quarter of all white families in the South owned slaves in 1860. So, slightly more than a fraction of one percent.

Quote: In the Lower South (SC, GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, FL -- those states that seceded first), about 36.7% of the white families owned slaves. In the Middle South (VA, NC, TN, AR -- those states that seceded only after Fort Sumter was fired on) the percentage is around 25.3%, and the total for the two combined regions -- which is what most folks think of as the Confederacy -- is 30.8%. In the Border States (DE, MD, KY, MO -- those slave states that did not secede) the percentage of slave-ownership was 15.9%, and the total throughout the slave states was almost exactly 26%.

In some southern states over 1/3 of whites owned slaves. In Mississippi, almost 50% of white families owned slaves.

Quote:Mississippi: 49%
S. Carolina: 46%
Georgia: 37%
Alabama: 35%
Florida: 34%
Louisiana: 29%
Texas: 28%
N.Carolina: 28%
Virginia: 26%
Tenn. 25%
Kentucky: 23%
Arkansas: 20%
Missouri: 13%
Maryland: 12%
Delaware: 3%

http://www.civilwarcauses.org/stat.htm

Oh how the South is misunderstood. Silly Johnny Reb, fighting the Yankees for the Southern 1%

The Confederacy is interesting because it was a separate country for four years. And the question of "what might have been?" is fascinating.

Imagine if we had four North American countries today:

1) Canada
2) United States of America (Maine to California, or Hawaii)
3) Confederate States of America (Virginia to Texas)
4) Mexico

How would WW I and WW II have played out?

(07-01-2015 04:31 PM)QuestionSocratic Wrote:  

(07-01-2015 04:29 PM)dawgitall Wrote:  

(07-01-2015 04:23 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  There have been tens of thousands of books written on the Civil War. It was the single most complex socio-political event in US history. Thank God this person finally came along to boil it all down for us.

For better and worse it defined us as a nation. No more important event occurred in our history.

Well I might argue that we're celebrating the most important event this Saturday. But that's just old conservative, out-of-touch, me.

I am certainly not attempting to downplay our independence.

(07-01-2015 05:18 PM)UConn-SMU Wrote:  The Confederacy is interesting because it was a separate country for four years. And the question of "what might have been?" is fascinating.

Imagine if we had four North American countries today:

1) Canada
2) United States of America (Maine to California, or Hawaii)
3) Confederate States of America (Virginia to Texas)
4) Mexico

How would WW I and WW II have played out?

I'd imagine the North would've sided with Germany just to take back the Confederate States of America. Aint like the South would be a pest, they wanted to be their own group and would have done so and not taken the whole country.