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Ideological Considerations 33%  33%  [ 11 ]
Family Obligations 6%  6%  [ 2 ]
Geographical Determination 52%  52%  [ 17 ]
Religious Considerations 3%  3%  [ 1 ]
Wouldn't Have Chosen a Side 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
Other 6%  6%  [ 2 ]
Total votes : 33
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 1:29 pm 
We'll have to agree to disagree. I don't really see how anyone could think that destroying a Country, pretty much wiping out a generation of it's youth, it's economy for 100 years, and then rubbing their noses in it, would improve things. The only recourse left to Southerners was to try to preserve their"social order".....That was not to be of course, but that just created more resentment on both sides. Conquered countries do not generally end up happy they lost. The South was no exception to that. Only the passage of time has resulted in the reduction of this, to where we are. I agree that we are better off than in1969. Think about it, it took 100 years plus to get there....That was a LONG time before the changes you spoke of could be attempted by the Government....I believe we'd have been far ahead of that pace without the war and the hard peace of reconstruction......I do believe that things will probably get better again over the next 100 years, but there is a ways to go, and it may go backwards at times in the meantime. I think this election is causing issues right now, because it is such a pathetically dirty campaign. That should be a temporary thing though.


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 2:30 pm 
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I agree to disagree Hank. The main point is that we are a united country now not two separate entities. Hallejulah to that!

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 2:51 pm 
Drex,

After my last post, I was thinking about exactly that.....The only thing I will say is that I think it is difficult, more likely impossible, for a Northerner (Yes even a Northern born person who lived or lives in the South), to truly understand what it means to be Southern....It is still a different culture, and though we are one country, the South still has it's own idenity, and is the closest thing to a separate country that exists in the USA to this very day. It took a lot of death and destruction to keep us one country, it definatly was not voluntary on the part of the South. I simply cannot celebrate that or ever feel it was for the best, but it is what it is, and we have to accept the verdict, whether we agree with it or not.......The best description I have ever read of this phenomenom (What it means to be Southern) is in the early part of the book "The History of the South".....I related to that section a great deal....Most of the rest of the book was dry and boring.....


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 3:13 pm 
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Viva la difference! I wouldn't have it any other way. How boring for a country to be homogeneous. Look at Canada with its French Canadians, etc. The south did not have to give up its culture but only to live under the same Law.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 3:17 pm 
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How did the South lower tariffs? I thought they were Federal tariffs that were in place, not state ones?

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 3:56 pm 
After the South seceded, they made their Tariff's half of the old Union Tariffs......They were Federal tariffs but the Southern states were no longer in the Union, and set thier own....The North did not take kindly to it.....


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 5:03 pm 
With a blockade in place they could set tariffs as low as they wanted... good luck getting imports though.

The Civil War was fought in two stages: A Gentleman's War 1861 - 1862, and then Total War 1863 - 1865.

The first part of the war was essentially a West Point fight where everyone wanted to be gentlemen. Private property was respected, slaves returned to their masters, and the North tried to fight the war as if their only goal and objective was reunification exactly as it was in 1860.

Um... fail. Who wanted to return to the way things were? To go back to the sectional strife that had been going on for so long and had helped cause a war? (McClellan would be raising his hand now). By late 1862 it was apparent that the war aims were insufficient. You couldnt just fight the South on the battlefields, you had to fight everything they stood for. Enter the Emancipation Proclamation. With that the war escalated into a complete Total War with the Confederates having no alternative but total victory or total defeat. Lincoln one-upped everyone with that move. He took England out of the equation permanently and placed the North on the moral high-ground that history has always left them on (and always will leave them on).

Lincoln understood what Total War meant. So did guys like Grant, Forrest, Sheridan, Sherman, and Jackson. They understood that war was killing and that the quicker you killed the other side the better. It wasn't enough to just beat them and maybe capture a dot on a map... you had to smash their spirits, burn the crops, disrupt their way of life, and then chuckle as you left. Confederate actions against Unionists in West Virginia and Tennessee were just as deplorable as anything Northerners did in Georgia or elsewhere. Remember when Gen. McCausland burned Chambersburg, PA, because they wouldnt pay the CSA the ransom demanded? So both sides were guilty of the same "crimes" against humanity. Who started it? It doesnt matter. Who finished it did.

The South's economy was crushed because they got into a Total War with an enemy vastly superior in industry and manpower. Reconstruction was a joke but thats another topic. The South staked their entire world on the war and lost. Rather than face a future without the expansion of slavery they chose to go to war and risk it all.


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 5:37 pm 
There was no blockade. and no war when the Confederate's cut their tariffs. This was all in the very beginning, before there was fighting. I don't think they should have done it.....Had they not, they might have just skated through.....That act was the first figurative shot of the war......Once the actual war began, you are pretty much correct, although I'll debate you anytime on the atrocities part....Comparing a few isolated incidents not sanctioned by their Goverment for the most part, to an organized program sanctioned by the Government are 2 quite differnt things. I also can't agree that what the Confederates did was as deplorable. It was nothing like Georgia, or the valley. I would more compare it to the bushwackers in Missouri. The fact is that none of this changes a thing when it comes to whether the South was better off for having lost. I think it more supports that it was not......


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 8:07 pm 
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You can't seriously think that the North wouldn't have pursued restoring the Union if the Confederacy hadn't lowered their tariffs?

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 8:42 pm 
Based on the polls of the day, before the lowering of the Southern Tariffs, the majority favored letting the South go.....Afterwarsds, there was war fever....It was the issue that swung the Northern mind.....MONEY......So it would have been a matter of whether the Northern politicians followed their electorates wishes. .Having said that, probably not, but it would have delayed things at the least, given the South more time to prepare, and there would definatly have been less ferver in the North (Doing majordamage to the Northern economy was fighting words so to speak). It would have given the North less time to win before the 1864 election. Had the war been delayed, Lincoln very well might not have been reelected....Then you likely have an independent South......Most likely you wouldn't be down here...Oh yeah, just so you know, the Texas Rangers have a thick file on you....You are considered an evil Northern sympathizer, and probably a Yankee spy......lol


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 9:44 pm 
I am going to have to see these polls because I have never heard anything like this either.

As far as war atrocities go I believe that proportionally the North committed more but only because the war took place in the Confederacy. When Lee invaded Maryland he gave strict orders not to harass the populace hoping to get them to join the Cause (so did Bragg in KY 1862). By 1863 the discipline was still strict in PA but McCausland did burn Chambersburg and Morgan did have his little raid. Had the South been able to effectively invade the North and capture, say, Boston... than Boston would have been burned to the ground same as Atlanta. We didnt even mention Fort Pillow or the execution of black Union soldiers either. So the argument of who was worse becomes a moot point in my mind. Once the "eye for an eye" mentality takes over then neither side is right.

Was the South better off losing? Too hard to tell. Too many variables. But I am satisfied where we are today as a nation so I wouldnt change it if I could. We could be much better but ... we could also be alot worse.


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 29, 2012 9:27 am 
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Come on people. Do you really believe the South would have succeeded if there was no slavery to defend? Would Congressman Sumner be caned almost to death for giving a passionate speech about tariffs rather than Kansas and slavery? Would John Brown raided Virginia to free the oppressed farmers from tarrifs? Would Kansas bleed over crop prices?

As to whether the South could have survived as an independent nation. With over half its border connecting it to an anti-slavery nation how long before the abolitioness, along with those who wanted the South to fail, started pouring arms into the south? By 1860 there were 8 million whites trying to hold 4 million slaves down. With a hostile nation supporting them how long before the South became a blood bath? In their rush to prevent the US from freeing their slaves I don't think they thought about what would happen with no laws preventing support of armed rebellion by their slaves in the nation north of them.

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PostPosted: Sun Jul 29, 2012 10:14 am 
Although those wishing to cause insurrection by slaves had always been a part of America and had never had any real success. Why they would be more successful post-1860 I can't imagine. Slavery was as close to home as Delaware and DC but still no slave insurrections began despite all the big talk from extremists like John Brown. Even with a million white men gone from the homefront during the war the slave-insurrection so feared never came. They ran away and some did, in fact, kill women and children before escaping but nothing on the scale feared. One has to look to find single instances of those events. Why should they rise up? They were being told (by Southern white ministers of course) that God wanted them to be slaves and that they would be rewarded in heaven for their faithfulness. If the CSA was independent and northern abolitionists continued to send guns south it would have sparked few slave insurrections but likely would have isolated abolitionists from mainstream northern society even more.

The South could have survived independently as long as they didnt go to war with the North... which, as history nicely has proven for us... was their first, biggest, and last mistake.


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PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2012 10:49 am 
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I believe reconstruction would have been easier under Lincoln. Boothe did the whole country, North and South a big dis-service.

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PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2012 12:54 pm 
I agree Al....if he was gonna kill Lincoln, he should have done so much earlier.....When he actually did it, it was not positive for the South.....

Oddly, my last extended answer to this topic is not posted for some reason.....I will choose to believe it must have been operator error onmy part.....


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