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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Welcome to Plantation America
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
he applied the virtues of courtesy, amiability, and honour to a bunch of slave owners.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif) As if everyone in the South were either a slave or a slave owner.
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
“[Obama] doesn’t value the NATO alliance as much. He’s very comfortable with American decline and the traditional alliances don’t mean as much to him. He wouldn’t like singing ’Land of Hope and Glory.’”
I hereby challenge Mitt Romney to audition for my vote by singing Land of Hope and Glory himself. How much musicianship has he cultivated in his aristocratic upbringing?
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
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testbear
Shipmate
# 4602
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
And is "He's not Anglo-Saxon" really something you'd say in this day and age to whip up racism against someone?
In America, who knows? Here in the UK, there's only one reason you'd call someone not Anglo-Saxon enough, and that's to cast them as not being Like One Of Us.
[ 26. July 2012, 15:00: Message edited by: testbear ]
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"If you really believe what you say you believe / you wouldn't be so damn reckless with the words you speak"
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by testbear:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
And is "He's not Anglo-Saxon" really something you'd say in this day and age to whip up racism against someone?
In America, who knows? Here in the UK, there's only one reason you'd call someone not Anglo-Saxon enough, and that's to cast them as not being Like One Of Us.
In the US, it's just odd. I can't recall anyone ever saying that about someone else in any context. It sort of aligns with the odd characteristic we've seen in Romney himself-- a tendency to use peculiar idioms that are technically correct but just sound... off. Like saying he traveled on an "aircraft" rather than "airplane". Doesn't really say anything much about him as presidential material but does, ironically, make him seem even more "not like us".
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
he applied the virtues of courtesy, amiability, and honour to a bunch of slave owners.
As if everyone in the South were either a slave or a slave owner.
Come back with those goalposts.
The initial article wasn't about the average person. It was about the rich and influential. It was about the values guiding the culture. And the Rich in the South were almost all slaveowners and made their money on the back of slaves. In the Deep South, between 30% and 57% of the population by state were slaves according to the 1860 Census. Ignore Texas (which had its own issues) and not one state in the Deep South had fewer than 43.7% of the population enslaved.
Yes, there were poor people in the South who neither were slaves nor owned slaves. But they weren't the elites. The elites openly and proudly launched an armed rebellion with a cause they themselves explicitely identified with slavery.
Now take your Confederate apologist bullshit elsewhere before I break out the primary sources.
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
I wonder if all the people in the South not rich enough to own slaves who went to war on behalf of the Confederacy are in some ways the ideological ancestors of all the poor whites who vote Republican -- they see themselves as defending a way of life that includes them, even if they aren't deriving a lot of financial reward from it.
quote:
Originally posted by Grammatica:
The article to which the OP makes reference reads like an oversimplified version of David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed, which postulates four,, not two, basic divisions. So I think there's something to it, but it's a little too schematic and binary.
Not to mention its reference to Colin Woodard's American Nations: The Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, which I hadn't heard of but am now interested in reading. It seems to me that if one group's values are ascendant, we're only going to know why if we look into why all the other groups are either going along with this or not able to promote their own values.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
quote:
“[Obama] doesn’t value the NATO alliance as much. He’s very comfortable with American decline and the traditional alliances don’t mean as much to him. He wouldn’t like singing ’Land of Hope and Glory.’”
I hereby challenge Mitt Romney to audition for my vote by singing Land of Hope and Glory himself. How much musicianship has he cultivated in his aristocratic upbringing?
If he sings 'Land of Hope and Glory' with any musicianship at all he is clearly not sufficiently identifying himself with his Anglo-Saxon roots. What we would be looking out for is straightforward volume and how vigorously he swings his Union Jack backwards and forwards in time to the music.
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"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by testbear:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
And is "He's not Anglo-Saxon" really something you'd say in this day and age to whip up racism against someone?
In America, who knows? Here in the UK, there's only one reason you'd call someone not Anglo-Saxon enough, and that's to cast them as not being Like One Of Us.
In the US, it's just odd. I can't recall anyone ever saying that about someone else in any context. It sort of aligns with the odd characteristic we've seen in Romney himself-- a tendency to use peculiar idioms that are technically correct but just sound... off. Like saying he traveled on an "aircraft" rather than "airplane". Doesn't really say anything much about him as presidential material but does, ironically, make him seem even more "not like us".
I would think that any American who knows what the term "Anglo-Saxon" means would know that it's not synonymous with white, and that by disparaging Obama for not being Anglo-Saxon, you're also be disparaging a huge chunk of the white population, including a lot of GOP voters.
Especially with the reference to Land Of Hope And Glory thrown in, it just strikes me as the least economical type of a dog-whistle you could possibly use.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I wonder if all the people in the South not rich enough to own slaves who went to war on behalf of the Confederacy are in some ways the ideological ancestors of all the poor whites who vote Republican -- they see themselves as defending a way of life that includes them, even if they aren't deriving a lot of financial reward from it.
Absolutely, and you can read all about it thanks to the late Joe Bageant This is especially recommended for Justinian, who sees slavery under every Southern stone. Come back and tell us about any apology for slavery you've found in this book.
The author happens to be from Appalachia, but I can just as easily hear the voices of my own ancestors on their Wisconsin dairy farms (most of which, of course, no longer exist). The issue is not Southern values so much as rural.
The article in the O.P. goes on as though a return to the out-and-out slavery of the South were a credible threat today. This is a fantasy, a distraction, a house with no plumbing. The real threats are more subtle: wage slavery and swindling, maintained under the illusion of freedom. It's been done very effectively before. Just look on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line.
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I wonder if all the people in the South not rich enough to own slaves who went to war on behalf of the Confederacy are in some ways the ideological ancestors of all the poor whites who vote Republican -- they see themselves as defending a way of life that includes them, even if they aren't deriving a lot of financial reward from it.
Honestly, I think that most of those who went to war on behalf of the Confederacy did so because there was an enemy army threatening their people, for peer pressure, for warm meals and pay, or because they were told to do it. Same as any other war, really.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Absolutely, and you can read all about it thanks to the late Joe Bageant This is especially recommended for Justinian, who sees slavery under every Southern stone. Come back and tell us about any apology for slavery you've found in this book.
I'm not accusing him of being an apologist for a bunch of evil fucks willing to go to war to defend the institution of slavery.
But I'd be delighted to hear your answer to three questions.
1: Can a group of people willing to launch a major war to defend the institution of slavery or even accepting the enslavement of a major proportion of their neighbours be described accurately as being guided by ideals of "amiability and courtesy"?
2: Did the Confederacy try to secede with a position openly identified with slavery, and then launch an armed attack on the United States of America? (Hint: The answer to the second part is that the Confederacy attacked at Fort Sumter).
3: Is commercialising things worse than going to war to keep the right to quite literally commercialise people, as you seem to be claiming?
The values of the antebellum South are obviously seen in what they were prepared to both kill and die for. Slavery being the notable one.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Bullfrog.
Prophetic Amphibian
# 11014
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Posted
Appalachia isn't exactly the south.
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Some say that man is the root of all evil
Others say God's a drunkard for pain
Me, I believe that the Garden of Eden
Was burned to make way for a train. --Josh Ritter, Harrisburg
Posts: 7522 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Appalachia isn't exactly the south.
Indeed. And West Virginia demonstrated that about as thoroughly as they could have. But when did Appalachia get brought up?
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
Justinian,
I'm at a loss as to why you wish to take this conversation further and further into irrelevancies in order to pursue the satisfaction of having me by the balls over one phrase. Joe Bageant wrote a book. Please read it. Morris Berman wrote another book, studded with footnotes: it hardly ignores primary sources. Please at least skim it before echoing someone else who probably never heard of it before that it is absurd on its face.
People who insist on boiling a complex web of historical issues down to one issue are frankly frightening, and I don't trust them. Or maybe you are the frightened one. I forget where you are on the political map, but for all the world you sound like New Yorker, asking us to fight a 150-year-old war all over again in order that we might not notice what's happening today.
complex issues
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Justinian,
I'm at a loss as to why you wish to take this conversation further and further into irrelevancies in order to pursue the satisfaction of having me by the balls over one phrase. Joe Bageant wrote a book. Please read it. Morris Berman wrote another book, studded with footnotes: it hardly ignores primary sources. Please at least skim it before echoing someone else who probably never heard of it before that it is absurd on its face.
People who insist on boiling a complex web of historical issues down to one issue are frankly frightening, and I don't trust them. Or maybe you are the frightened one. I forget where you are on the political map, but for all the world you sound like New Yorker, asking us to fight a 150-year-old war all over again in order that we might not notice what's happening today.
complex issues
Alogon,
It's not just the one phrase. It's your entire confederate apologism that is evident throughout this thread. It's the courtesy. It's the accusations of carpetbagging. It's the accusations that the real predators were the carpetbaggers rather than the people who thought they should literally own other people.
As for your attempt to deflect attention from slavery, it's not me who claimed the position of the rebels was "thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery". It was the people who decided that the Confederacy should secede in the first place who did that. Read the stated causes of secession then come back to me.
And then tell me on what ground you think that the carpetbaggers were the real predators. On what ground you think that those that valued slavery were somehow more courteous than those that valued getting ahead.
You're simultaneously trying to whitewash the Confederacy on two counts, complete with double standards. Either stop it and apologise or stand by your words.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
I'm not defending slavery. I am defending Berman's book vis-a-vis the facile alternative of the article cited in the O.P. Berman does not defend slavery, either. If you would like me to provide details of how he has made such distinctions, that is fair enough. My copy is a mile or two away at the moment, but I trust that in a few hours I can get to it.
I did not claim that the carpetbaggers were "the real" predators, but they certainly were predators, as you admitted. I brought them up (although Berman didn't make much a point of them if he mentioned them at all) because their conduct epitomized values already well under development in northern cities. Within the next fifty years the type would reign all but supreme-- they even bought a Presidential election-- and their spiritual descendents have the upper hand now. You don't really want to dismiss them as only "getting ahead", do you? That would be to swallow their propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Getting ahead of whom? How is getting far ahead through sharp practice distinguished from enslavement?
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
I'm not defending slavery. I am defending Berman's book vis-a-vis the facile alternative of the article cited in the O.P.
You are not defending slavery. You are defending the South that "was guided by ideals of honor, courage, amiability, and courtesy.'" And not coincidently the South whose expression of those supposed ideals involved first enslaving their fellow man and then disenfranchising him as soon as the Army was withdrawn and Reconstruction ended.
quote:
How is getting far ahead through sharp practice distinguished from enslavement?
![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif)
Did you really mean what you just wrote? ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
Yes. It was a question. Would you like to attempt an answer, while I flee back to my copy of Berman?
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
I did not claim that the carpetbaggers were "the real" predators, but they certainly were predators, as you admitted. I brought them up (although Berman didn't make much a point of them if he mentioned them at all) because their conduct epitomized values already well under development in northern cities. Within the next fifty years the type would reign all but supreme-- they even bought a Presidential election-- and their spiritual descendents have the upper hand now. You don't really want to dismiss them as only "getting ahead", do you? That would be to swallow their propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Getting ahead of whom? How is getting far ahead through sharp practice distinguished from enslavement?
Connect the dots for me. How are the folks that have the upper hand today the spiritual descendants of the carpetbaggers?
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
the sort of scum who would lead an armed rebellion and four year long civil war in an attempt to preserve their "right" to treat human beings as livestock really aren't good people.
Was that why? Here's Berman now, quoting from "a popular Northern wartime ditty [p.122]. 'A willingness to fight with vigor, For loyal rights, but not the nigger.'"
[p.123] Quoting Lincoln's response in 1862 to newspaperman Horace Greeley's criticism that he didn't take a strong enough stand:
quote:
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it... What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
quote:
Justinian:
You are pointing to incidents. Not the way of life of the entire aristocracy, that they were literally willing to go to war for.
In the eyes of the North, the South was one more backward and stupid society that had to be broken in the name of Progress. Along with the American Indian, Mexico, Cuba, Hawaii, Vietnam... "All the evidence suggests that that the North's 'nobility' in fighting slavery was a long-after-the-fact justification... It is a thesis that gets people all worked up, but it finally doesn't wash." [Berman pp.123-124]
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Justinian:
the sort of scum who would lead an armed rebellion and four year long civil war in an attempt to preserve their "right" to treat human beings as livestock really aren't good people.
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Was that why? Here's Berman now, quoting from "a popular Northern wartime ditty [p.122]. 'A willingness to fight with vigor, For loyal rights, but not the nigger.'"
The fact that northerners weren't fighting to per se abolish slavery doesn't mean that the south wasn't fighting to maintain it.
Lincoln was trying to preserve the Union. But the reason the Union was threatened in the first place was because the south tried to secede, based on their fears that northern policy under Lincoln was going to endanger the institution of slavery(And yes, I realize that Lincoln pre-war wasn't proposing absolute abolition of slavery.)
quote:
In the eyes of the North, the South was one more backward and stupid society that had to be broken in the name of Progress. Along with the American Indian, Mexico, Cuba, Hawaii, Vietnam... "
Well, sure. And in the eyes of the British during World War II, the Germans were just another backwards race to be broken in the same way as the Zulus and the Boers(look at Dresden). That still doesn't create a moral equivalency between Nazi Germany and Churchill's England.
[ 26. July 2012, 23:18: Message edited by: Stetson ]
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
A society with an economy based on chattel slavery is backward and stupid.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
Abolishing slavery was the Great Unspoken in the pre-Civil War US. Nobody admitted it, but everybody acted on it.
That was the essential conclusion on slavery of an online Civil War course from Yale that I watched. Along with you can find Abraham Lincoln quotes on both sides of the slavery issue.
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NDP Federal Convention Ottawa 2018: A random assortment of Prots and Trots.
Posts: 7646 | From: Peterborough, Upper Canada | Registered: Jun 2007
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
Alogon:
quote:
How is getting far ahead through sharp practice distinguished from enslavement?
quote:
Yes. It was a question. Would you like to attempt an answer, while I flee back to my copy of Berman?
That's open slavery aplogetics.
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Was that why? Here's Berman now, quoting from "a popular Northern wartime ditty [p.122]. 'A willingness to fight with vigor, For loyal rights, but not the nigger.'"
[p.123] Quoting Lincoln's response in 1862 to newspaperman Horace Greeley's criticism that he didn't take a strong enough stand:
quote:
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it... What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
quote:
Justinian:
You are pointing to incidents. Not the way of life of the entire aristocracy, that they were literally willing to go to war for.
In the eyes of the North, the South was one more backward and stupid society that had to be broken in the name of Progress. Along with the American Indian, Mexico, Cuba, Hawaii, Vietnam... "All the evidence suggests that that the North's 'nobility' in fighting slavery was a long-after-the-fact justification... It is a thesis that gets people all worked up, but it finally doesn't wash." [Berman pp.123-124]
And that's open Confederacy apologetics based on an attempt to deflect the conversation from the motivations of the Confederacy to those of the United States.
Come donw and defend yourself, your "peculiar institution", and your slaveowner's revolt in hell. If you can.
And @SPK, no you can't. What you can find when you look at Lincoln is a moderate abolitionist. He's consistent about wanting to end slavery and finding it a vile institution, but he wasn't a radical who thought it must be abolished at that second.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
A society with an economy based on chattel slavery is backward and stupid.
And this goes double for a society that then launches an armed insurrection based on chattel slavery.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
A society with an economy based on chattel slavery is backward and stupid.
Do you include ancient Athens in that verdict?
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
A society with an economy based on chattel slavery is backward and stupid.
Do you include ancient Athens in that verdict?
I do. Of course Ancient Athens is backward by modern standards. The word "Ancient" should be a clue.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
A society with an economy based on chattel slavery is backward and stupid.
Do you include ancient Athens in that verdict?
Morally speaking, sure. At the very least, if someone at the time had been agitating for policies that would restrict slavery, and the Athenians had gone to war to preserve it, I certainly wouldn't cut them any slack. Even if I could still recognize that they produced a lot of nice poetry and whatnot.
I mean, does anyone think that Spartan militarism and infanticide are redeemed because Plato wrote a beuatifully-crafted book celebrating their virtues?
[ 27. July 2012, 00:45: Message edited by: Stetson ]
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
The fact that northerners weren't fighting to per se abolish slavery doesn't mean that the south wasn't fighting to maintain it.
Precisely.
And there is another thing. The South - well, at any rate the more sensible of their strategists and politicians, I think certainly including Lee and Davis - knew perfectly well they could never beat the North, because of the overwhelming difference in numbers and industrial production. What they had to do was to hurt the North hard enough to turn public opinion against the war, to convince people that the inevitable death and destruction was a price not worth paying to keep the South in the Union. They got near that a couple of times but they never quite got there. Really they last their last genuine hope after the fall of New Orleans, very near the begining of the war. After that it was slow strangulation.
And the perception that the war was against slavery is one of the things that made that defeat more certain. Even if it is true that the war was not "about" slavery, there was a large enough minority of abolitionists in the North to stiffen their resistance to the South. Of course not all northerners thought that they were fighting a moral crusade against a great evil, probably not even most of them, but enough of them did to make a difference.
The perception that the war was a war against slavery hurt the South in all sorts of other ways. The North also got significant numbers of volunteers from outside the USA who turned up to fight against slavery.
No foreign country supported or even recognised the South. Political and business elites in Britain and France and Prussia had some sympathy for the South, and certainly had a huge interest in trading with the South - those countries had no need for Pennsylvanian steel or New England ships but a huge demand for Southern cotton and tobacco (and they quite liked selling arms to the the South as well) but it would have been politically impossible for any of them to come out in favour of the South because of popular opinion about slavery. Their governments would have preferred a quick end to the war and the resumption of business as usual, with or without a divided America, but they could do little to bring it about. Intervention by either Britain or France would almost certainly have broken the Union blockade at sea very quickly, possibly even blockaded Union ports. Also of course if Britain and France had sided with the South then Canada and Mexico would have followed, a huge change in the strategic situation on land. But it couldn't happen because of the perception that the war was about slavery.
And the South could have done something about that perception. They could have done what Lincoln did - they could have freed slaves who volunteered for the Army. It was discussed, at least some Confederate generals were in favour (possibly including Lee), but nothing was done about it till 1865 - four years too late, when their whole game was up. So yes, there are good reasons for thinking it really was about slavery.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
38,000 British North Americans - Canada as we know it didn't exist yet - served in the Union Army. The number that served in the Confederate Army was minuscule.
BTW what Britain did went for us, we weren't independent at the time and had no say in the matter.
But Upper Canada had passed the Act Against Slavery in 1797 and had been a destination for slaves since the 1838 decision by Lt. Gov. Sir John Colborne in the case of Thornton Blackburn that "A man cannot steal himself". We didn't love the Yanks, but we detested slavery even more.
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
38,000 British North Americans - Canada as we know it didn't exist yet - served in the Union Army. The number that served in the Confederate Army was minuscule.
BTW what Britain did went for us, we weren't independent at the time and had no say in the matter.
But Upper Canada had passed the Act Against Slavery in 1797 and had been a destination for slaves since the 1838 decision by Lt. Gov. Sir John Colborne in the case of Thornton Blackburn that "A man cannot steal himself". We didn't love the Yanks, but we detested slavery even more.
According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, "Canadian opinion was generally anti-Northern". The article also details several incidents in which Britain and/or its Canadian proxy took actions that were essentially pro-Confederate.
I've also read somewhere that when the St. Albans raiders were jailed in Montreal, they were regarded as heroes by much of the population. But yes, I've also heard the stats about Canadians fighting for the Union.
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Stetson
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# 9597
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Posted
Interestingly enough, wikipedia, despite using The Canadian Encyclopedia as a source, says that economic and cultural ties along the border "encouraged Canadian sympathy towards the Union". They also say that the Catholic press in East Canada was pro-Confederate.
I wonder how many of the Canadian Unionist volunteers were either transplanted Americans, or people with recent American ancestry. I believe such types had played a major role in the Upper Canada Rebellion of the 1830s.
Canada In The American Civil War
[ 27. July 2012, 01:19: Message edited by: Stetson ]
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
And that's open Confederacy apologetics based on an attempt to deflect the conversation from the motivations of the Confederacy to those of the United States.
Of which the South was totally unaware? No, you don't get away with talking about the motive of only one party in a dispute, especially those on the defensive. 1858, Cincinnati Gazette: the South had to be regenerated by introducing the Northern way of life into it. 1856, New York Tribune: Let "Northern capitalists, manufacturers, and merchants" flood into Virginia. Lincoln to an official of the Interior Department in 1862: "The character of the war will be changed. It will be one of subjugation.. The South is to be destroyed and replaced by new propositions and new ideas." Thaddeus Stevens speaking in 1865: "Northernizing the South" required "the desolation of the South." Southern institutions "must be broken up and relaid... This can only be done by treating and holding them as a conquered people." In his march through Georgia, how much thought do you suppose Sherman was giving to the freed slaves who had to live there, too?
Can any society be expected to commit suicide?
Self-defense to preserve slavery is admittedly deplorable. But insisting that self-defense under these conditions was only to preserve slavery, and refusing to look at any other factor, looks suspiciously like a desperate faith in the kind of imperialism that triumphed. Now that the American South is out of the way, on to the world.
Are you still thinking, by the way, of defending the article in the O.P., to the effect that the plantation model is our threat today?
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Back to Canadians in the Union army for a sec..
Here is a rather ironic bit of history.
In my experience, not a lot of Canadians know this. I actually only found out about it myself a week or so ago. Apparently, he married a Yank and died in Boston.
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
In his march through Georgia, how much thought do you suppose Sherman was giving to the freed slaves who had to live there, too?
Possibly not much. In fact, I've heard(albeit from pro-southern sources) that there were quite a few atrocities commited against the ex-slaves by the Union army.
Now, that being said:
After Sherman had finished his march through Georgia, let's say, five years on, if you had polled the ex-slaves and asked them "Are you happy or unhappy that Sherman's side won?", what do you think most of them would have said?
And, for that matter, if you were to poll the slaves' descendants today, and ask them "Do you feel the same way when you see a Condeferate Flag as when you see the Stars And Stripes?", how do you think most of them would answer?
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
]Of which the South was totally unaware? No, you don't get away with talking about the motive of only one party in a dispute, especially those on the defensive.
You mean that the side that rammed through the Fugitive Slave Act and the Dredd Scott decision was on the defensive? The one that preemptively first seceeded and then declared war?
quote:
1858, Cincinnati Gazette: the South had to be regenerated by introducing the Northern way of life into it. 1856, New York Tribune: Let "Northern capitalists, manufacturers, and merchants" flood into Virginia.
W00t! You have a couple of magazine op-eds showing there was a culture clash. I bet I could find worse from Rush Limbaugh and you don't see California launching an armed rebellion because of it.
quote:
Lincoln to an official of the Interior Department in 1862:
...
Thaddeus Stevens speaking in 1865:
And now your argument requires a time machine. In 1860, the Southern states were part of the United States of America and should have been treated accordingly. In 1862 they were in armed rebellion and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. You don't think that statements made after 1861 about what to do with Southern states might have something to do with the Confederacy declaring war on the United States of America and being treated accordingly?
quote:
Can any society be expected to commit suicide?
I don't know. But in 1861, despite the United States of America bending over backwards and even ratifying the Corwin Amendment to preserve slavery on the table, the Confederacy insisted on committing suicide by first seceding then attacking against a more industrial nation.
Whether a society can be expected to commit suicide is an irrelevant question. The South did by attacking the United States of America.
quote:
Self-defense to preserve slavery is admittedly deplorable. But insisting that self-defense under these conditions was only to preserve slavery, and refusing to look at any other factor, looks suspiciously like a desperate faith in the kind of imperialism that triumphed. Now that the American South is out of the way, on to the world.
I have quoted the source documents in the Hell thread you very much deserve. When people talk about their own causes they normally paint them in the best light possible.
The Confederates were explicitely saying that "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery" and "Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition."
If that is what they were saying in public when presenting their own case, what real reason did they have that was so amoral they had to hide it behind the smokescreen of slavery?
quote:
Are you still thinking, by the way, of defending the article in the O.P., to the effect that the plantation model is our threat today?
Honestly, after the Greenland news, I don't think our threat today is either model. It's fucking up the atmosphere and the environment.
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Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
And, for that matter, if you were to poll the slaves' descendants today, and ask them "Do you feel the same way when you see a Condeferate Flag as when you see the Stars And Stripes?", how do you think most of them would answer?
They'd rather take the Stars and Strips and not being slaves, of course.
But let's try this thought experiment: ask them whether they feel that, even after 150 years of American capitalist social structure, they've gotten altogether a fair break, and few would say yes. And ask yourself, ask me, and ask those communitarian, socially conscientious Yankees whether the decendents of the slaves have gotten altogether a fair break, and I suspect that an even lower percentage would say yes.
I am in total sympathy with this author's moral outrage, and even agree that today's elite think privately as she describes. (Oh, a few details are off, such as the suggestion that they would rather hire 150 unskilled minions than invest in technology that would do the same work. Not in this country, they don't. On the contrary, they practically worship technology-- just as we are all invited to do.) My problem is that she ignores the grand narrative that they still dangle in front of us. Is there anything of the plantation in it? It is essentially the same outlook as dominated the Gilded Age 120 years ago.
In this respect, I think that she is actually understating her case.
[ 27. July 2012, 02:12: Message edited by: Alogon ]
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Interestingly enough, wikipedia, despite using The Canadian Encyclopedia as a source, says that economic and cultural ties along the border "encouraged Canadian sympathy towards the Union". They also say that the Catholic press in East Canada was pro-Confederate.
I wonder how many of the Canadian Unionist volunteers were either transplanted Americans, or people with recent American ancestry. I believe such types had played a major role in the Upper Canada Rebellion of the 1830s.
Canada In The American Civil War
No, it was a combination of the Civil War being the big exciting thing for a young farm lad from Canada and the fact that you could avoid conscription into the Union Army if you provided a substitute or paid a $300 fee to the government. There was a lively market in "bounties" for men willing to volunteer in place of unwilling conscripts. The South didn't have that system, you had to serve personally, and besides was too far away.
33-55 thousands Canadians served in the Union Army, only a few hundred served the Confederacy.
Entire battalions of New York regiments were from Ontario. Buffalo was a thriving recruitment depot, as was Detroit.
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NDP Federal Convention Ottawa 2018: A random assortment of Prots and Trots.
Posts: 7646 | From: Peterborough, Upper Canada | Registered: Jun 2007
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
They'd rather take the Stars and Strips and not being slaves, of course.
But let's try this thought experiment: ask them whether they feel that, even after 150 years of American capitalist social structure, they've gotten altogether a fair break, and few would say yes. And ask yourself, ask me, and ask those communitarian, socially conscientious Yankees whether the decendents of the slaves have gotten altogether a fair break, and I suspect that an even lower percentage would say yes.
Indeed. They haven't got a fair break. A big part of that is that despite Thaddeus Stephens' and Abraham Lincoln's goals of reforming the South, Reconstruction was abandoned. And this paved the way for Jim Crow. Not, of course, that the North were angels (see Sundown Towns for details). The oh-so-amiable Southern Elites were able to take back control through the same courtesy they had always used on people they didn't like - open terrorism first through political violence and then through the Klan.
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Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I wonder if all the people in the South not rich enough to own slaves who went to war on behalf of the Confederacy are in some ways the ideological ancestors of all the poor whites who vote Republican -- they see themselves as defending a way of life that includes them, even if they aren't deriving a lot of financial reward from it. America does not hold patent on people bamboozled into voting against themselves, though.
To extend this, they saw/see it as preserving the possibility of achieving slave-holding/becoming rich.
quote:
Originally posted by Unreformed:
And Florida always has been, if you still want to count that as "South".
The Northern part of Florida seems very much the South, still.
ETA: I've seen no evidence Lincoln was ever pro-slavery, merely that he was willing to delay abolishment in preference of avoiding civil war.
[ 27. July 2012, 16:52: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
A big part of that is that despite Thaddeus Stephens' and Abraham Lincoln's goals of reforming the South, Reconstruction was abandoned.
Interestingly, in the infamously racist(to put it mildly) movie Birth Of A Nation, Lincoln is portrayed as the ally of southerners, against the supposed extremism of the Radical Republicans.
That movie had an agenda of uniting north and south in a common sense of nationhood(hence the title), so I guess the point of the Lincoln revisionism was that southerners should love old Abe as much as Yankees do.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
I've seen no evidence Lincoln was ever pro-slavery
This essay by Gary Wills makes a fairly convincing argument that Lincoln was, by any possible measure, a white supremacist. And one not entirely redeemed by pointing out that he lived in a racist time, since there were genuine abolitionists who were to the left of him on the question of racial equality.
However, he does seem to have had a sincere moral objection to the ownership of human beings, contrary to the wilder excesses of anti-hagiography, which portrays him as opposing slavery simply because he thought it was bad for capitalism.
Karl Marx, by the way, absolutely worshipped the man.
[ 27. July 2012, 19:59: Message edited by: Stetson ]
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
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