Confederate Legacy

What is confederate legacy to you? I don't care about the South as is and neo-confederate movements but at certain point of our mutual history the CSA demonstrated true adherence to initial American values, unbent will-to-win spirit and martial prowess. History knows no 'if' but I would be curious to see the world in which the Confederacy won the war.
Try to provide your opinion with no regards to slavery. We all knows both the USA and the CSA treated blacks like dirt, and none of this countries cared about minorities rights. Slavery was an economic pretext to war for domination over once united America.

 

Try "Guns of The South" by Harry Turtledove. He writes fictional alternative history, but it might give you some idea of what might have been, and it does have some interesting twists.
Enjoy!

 

A bunch of bigoted hicks decided to rope an entire region of America into a pointless war that lead to unnecessary death, all because they wanted to continue to own people.

Let's not pretend that this was about "State's Rights". States had less rights under the Confederacy. They weren't allowed to secede either, and they couldn't ban slavery even if they wanted to. Many declarations of secession contained an admission that slavery was the primary motive in secession.

The confederacy was an atrocity that is not worthy of the slightest sympathy or glory. Their symbols should be considered only slightly less heinous than those of the nazis. Their legacy should be forgotten, or at the very least hated.

 

Thanks!

 

How come black people have been deprived of their rights until 1965 if the Confederacy is the one to blame for all racial atrocities committed in this country?
Slavery was an economic motive for both parties in that war. Presidents of the North didn't care about poor black guys, they wanted to subjugate southern cotton and tobacco manufacturers and used slavery as an effective lever. More than that slavery is not a uniquely southern trait as it was perfectly legal before the Civil War in certain states of the united country.

 

Concessions had to be made to the south during reconstruction because people were too spineless to tell them where to go and how to get there.

You're lapsing into whataboutism. The North tried to end slavery. That puts them a step above the confederates, even if they weren't perfect. The confederates, however, wanted to keep owning people.

The southern cotton and tobacco industries were based upon slavery. Maybe if they didn't want to be subjugated, they shouldn't have ran on the blood of the innocent.

 

If the north had cotton needing to be picked, they'd be wanting to keep slaves too.

 

The map of North America would look more like that of Europe, with a black version of Israel thrown in there somewhere. Not sure what Europe would look like after WWII, but Japan would have a chunk of mainland China in its borders. Beyond that, day to day life would probably be a little closer to the Waltons instead of Modern Family.

 

You seem to have a perverted view of American values as they were expressed at the founding.

 

The North didn't try to end it initially. Abraham Lincoln is on record saying if he could keep the Union intact and continue slavery he would. It was all about keeping the country together no matter if it cost the lives, souls, and freedom of a particular group.

 

State sovereignty was and should be a great deal of importance. The foundation of the Republic was based upon the principle of willing cooperation rather than the subjugation of provinces by the monarchs. It's why the word "State" is used rather than Sector or Province. The USA is a league of second nations in America.

 

They started a war they couldn't win and got their asses kicked. That's some legacy.

 

The confederates were fighting for slavery from the beginning, and the North only started fighting against it a bit later. That in no way paints the confederates in a positive light.

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They didn't, and they didn't, so it's irrelevant. The point is that one side was fighting for an abuse of human rights and the other was fighting against it.

 

I think the Confederation was our last hope to protect the ideals of our founding fathers.Abraham Lincoln was a traitor, and tyrant who broke the country and took decades to restore some of what was lost. But what was never regained was the spirit of our nation.

 

Why should I care about or want state independence? How does that benefit anyone?

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If the confederacy represented "American Ideals", I'm glad those ideals are dead. Whatever kind of ideals we have now are leagues better.

 

Sure they did. They killed over 100,000 more than they lost, and that was after being outnumbered and blocked from strategic ports.

 

That would benefit everyone. If you want an all black state with a fully socialist economic system, that would be possible with a small federal Government with most power being given to the states. Anyone who doesn't like that could move away.

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Having an all powerful centralized Government is why the American revolution was fought in the first place. They didn't want England's monarchy. Lincoln essentially brought that back with his war upon the South and subsequent power grab.

 

Here is a good book on "if the south had won the civil war."

https://books.google.com/books?id=BRvZ97EMVKMC&source=gbs_similarbooks

MacKinlay Kantor is the author, he also wrote the book on ANDERSONVILLE and won a Puiltzer prize for it.

There were members of my family back then who fought for Georgia during the civil war. I think, at least according to my great grandpa who lived to be 102, that was a big difference between the north and the south. My ancestors fought for Georgia, those in the North fought for the Union.

The south was a loose confederation of states, probably much like the United States under the Articles of Confederation. Georgia was fighting for the right to choose its own type of government and to decide which confederation if any to belong to.

 

Yep. We got the usual Lincol detrators revisionists going here.

Southerners just can't take responsibility for their actions in the civil war and admit they were the complete aggressors and that it was about racism.

 

Slavers, traitors and hypocrites. Shame my namesake ancestor didn't deservedly whack more of them. Although their spirit lives on with several on this wonderful website.

 

I understand and realize the hard choices many of them had to make: to fight to protect their states and families or fight to preserve the union. Amongst the generals and commanders of that war, many of them, literally, knew the opposing general they were fighting against, having gone to VMI together and fought alongside each other in war with Mexico. This added an entirely new dimension to the tragedy that was the civil war. No one should have to make these kinds of choices.

To not only make such a choice, but then to fight what grew to be an increasingly unwinnable war made all the more stark by just how destitute, starved and bedraggled their armies became and put up such a fight that the war dragged on for a year and a half after Gettysburg, is a testament to their American spirit---and yes, they might have rebelled, but they were still Americans. And as such, their legacy is a part of the American legacy, and IMO, I have a lot of respect for what they were able to accomplish militarily.

 

To the South - the confederate legacy is one of being proud of fallen relatives who died trying to protect their homes and families. To the North - the confederate legacy is more associated with slavery, although less than 5% of people ever owned or benefited from slavery.

 

Actually, even under the Articles of Confederation the sovereignty of the states was only nominal; and it's no accident that the idea is nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

Which included preservation of the institute of slavery above all else?

 

Are you kidding me? The war could have turned out completely differently if only a few things had changed. It was very nearly lost. They did not "get their asses kicked".

 

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite." -James Madison

Ever hear of the tenth amendment?

Considering how few southerners owned slaves, I doubt they were fighting for "slavery above all else"