I see dozens of snots like you run through my class each semester. the problem with your type is that you confuse youth with wisdom. heres the deal young buck. those theories youre learning(yes theyre theories. if you bothered to stay with history longer than the four years in college...ok 7 in your case...youll see that history is cyclical...

This really is getting funnier by the moment.

PLEASE continue!

One of the better quotes I have heard regarding the civil war was as follows:

If you know very little about the civil war, you think that it was all about slavery.

As you study it more, you start to agree that it might in fact be about something else.

Then, when you have really studied the civil war, you realize "Nope, pretty much just slavery." http://www.jjmccullough.com/CSA.htm - One good way to see that is to look at this line by line comparison of the USA and CSA constitutions.

Hmmm...then why pray tell were southerners fighting when 95% of confederate soldiers were not slave owners?

I had wondered why you were being so antagonist about this thread- a thread you injected yourself into- but now we come to the heart of the matter: you are a confederate sympathizer. Fair enough. But I can't let an actual assertion of incorrect fact go uncorrected.

That bit about Confederate Soldiers not owning slaves? Maybe technically correct, sort of. But that's not counting the fact that so very many Confederate soldiers were the children of slave owners. Take a look here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/08/small-truth-papering-over-a-big-lie/61136/

Hmmm...then why pray tell were southerners fighting when 95% of confederate soldiers were not slave owners?

I had wondered why you were being so antagonist about this thread- a thread you injected yourself into- but now we come to the heart of the matter: you are a confederate sympathizer. Fair enough. But I can't let an actual assertion of incorrect fact go uncorrected.

I doubt that his being a southern sympathizer is making him impersonate someone who teaches this stuff, and hurl insults. Southern sympathizers are perfectly capable of debating this material without being impolite about it. Nope, this fellow is simply a troll who has come to entertain us.

As to the 95%. That may or may not be an accurate figure. Someone who teaches this stuff would have had a citation for such a specific figure. Not that it matters. The people who enlisted were not the ones making the decision to secede in the first place. The decision was made by the political elite, whom - I imagine (I don't have a citation of the top of my head) - were mostly slave-owning planters, or very much interconnected with that industry.

Cubby, you really need to either tone down the snark and condescension, or start spending a little bit longer working on your spelling, grammar, and punctuation. You really can't pull off the wordy know-it-all thing while also typing like an aardvark smacking his snout against a keyboard. You're not the only person here with an education -- I just so happen to teach US History, myself, at the college level -- and it does all of us a disservice to see someone being so dismissive and spiteful while also appearing to be so ignorant or, at best, sloppy and careless. This is particularly true since you're being so very acerbic in a thread specifically flagged as being a polite discussion; if you're as educated and genteel as you claim, you should act like it in order to get your message heard, yes?

As to why so many Confederates still fought, while the rank-and-file didn't own slaves? It's because the wealthy planter elite that did own slaves had dominated Southern culture and education for so long that the individual didn't need to be wealthy enough to own a slave in order for them to still feel culturally and emotionally invested in the notion of slavery. The planter elite ran the media, they ran entertainment, they ran politics, and they ran the economy; of course the poor whites got in line when they cracked the whip, every bit as much as the slaves did. When you control what people know, what they read, the plays they watch, the newspapers they have access to, you control those people (for another example of this, take a look at the current protests in Oklahoma, where lawmakers are cutting funding to AP History because it's "too negative"). The Southern plantation elite owned the hearts and minds of the poor whites as soundly as they did the bodies of their slaves.

Furthermore, the martial pride of the South was injured when -- through a deliberate distortion -- the planter elite felt threatened by the shifting slave/free balance in DC, so they carefully painted the entire affair as, for instance, "The War of Northern Aggression." When you tell a native-born Virginian or Georgian his home and his way of life are under attack from foreign Yankees, many a young man will step up and fight a war. Once the social pressure to enlist increased, young men signed up by the thousands, eager to go off to war.

Raised on stories about Francis Marion and other proud Southern soldiers (from a few generations earlier), told they were fighting another American Revolution to stand up for their state's rights (told so by the wealthy planters who stayed home, after creating the conflict in the first place)...off they went. Into a war where they had no real chance to win, a war against an existing military, an existing chain of command, against the logistics and industry of the North, against the greater population of the North, against the international support given to the North, against the international condemnation of slavery, against all odds, against all reason, against all hope, off they went. A whole generation of young men was duped into defending the wealthy elite, simply because the elite had told them for generations that while slavery was on, the poor white man wasn't the lowest of the low.

So do I blame the average Confederate soldier? Not in the slightest. But do I condemn the Confederate States of America, for killing hundreds of thousands of Americans in an attempt to cling to a way of life that deserved to be destroyed, a way of life built upon the sweat, blood, and assault of generations of people who'd done them no wrong? I absolutely do. I can admire the bravery of Mosby, Morgan, Jackson, and Lee -- officers and gentlemen I've published and presented research on -- even while condemning the cause for which they fought.

But, here. If the Civil War wasn't about slavery, how do you explain away that the one thing every CSA state constitution agreed upon was slavery? How do you explain away the immediate villification of men like Patrick Cleburne, who spoke up to free (and arm) the slaves in defense of his adopted Southern homeland? How do you explain away about a century of Jim Crow, with hundreds of lynchings a year, the convict-lease program, and the continuing economic and criminal justice disparities faced by African Americans even today? How do you explain away that only a single slave state -- Kentucky -- didn't join the Confederacy? If it wasn't about slavery, was it just a coincidence that free states happened to join the Union, and slave states happened to join the Confederacy?

EDIT: Drat, quoting doesn't work on this computer. Going to have to manually copy the post.

EDIT2: ... Copy and Paste is not working either. Stupid dinosaur of a computer. Well, this is a response to Mazz0. I'll try to edit in the quote when I'm on a better computer.

There's a lot of logistical problems with seceding, though. It's easier when the seceding territory is already somewhat autonomous due to geographical boundary, but as the Scotland referendum demonstrated, even that's tricky.

You've got financial issues, to start. The new country needs to start printing it's own currency, which is probably going to start relatively week. Companies used to being able to do business across the country now need to completely change their operations. This is particularly problematic if the seceding part of the country is in control of a resource needed by the rest of the old country (Or the other way around, as the South found out). Plus, particularly for the U.S., there's the national debt to consider- Figuring out how such a colossal amount of debt should be divided, well... Take a look at divorce settlements, and multiply that ugliness a couple thousand times.

Then there's infrastructure. How do you split up the military supplies? What about maintaining transit methods across the borders? Utilities like power? Plus you need to create a whole new administration in the new country. And what about pollution issues like dumping garbage down the river?

And of course, not everybody will be happy with secession, so the humanitarian thing to do is hold off for a few years while people who want to live in one country or another can move. Mass immigration/emigration will cause yet more issues.

I'm not saying self-determination on a national scale isn't a noble ideal, nor am I dismissing it as a possibility; I'm just pointing out it's a lot more unpleasant than a lot of secessionists want to go through (Granted, this can be said of a lot of political changes)

sounds like a couple of people have completed a fall history course at their local community college. opinions expressed are pedantic at best and are verbatim referencing entry level history texts.

Hey cubby09, I asked in the initial post in this thread and even in the title for a polite discussion. You come in and don't really offer anything substantial to the discussion, but make sure to insult everyone here.

Even if I had only taken a fall class at a community college, why is it bad to talk about the AWC here? Why is it a bad thing to talk about intro discussions about the war? If everyone is civil, then maybe people could learn something. Maybe other people who know more show up and add more depth to the discussion.

In my opinion any group of people with a long established right to the land they occupy should have the right to elect their own government. That means Scotland had the right to its independence referendum, it means Catalonia should have the same right, and it makes the South had every right to secede from the union (that is if you accept they had the rift to exist at all, and shouldn't have been compelled to abandon the land back to the natives, but that's an entirely different discussion) IF an actual, democratic majority of the population wanted to do so.

As a few other people mentioned, they might have been able to have a referendum on seceding. Did, they, though? No, the state legislatures passed some motions and then tried to siege federal property. When a supply ship was sent, it was fired upon and the war began.

@Critias: I agree with what you are saying. I wish I could recall more from my professor about the details of the oligarch media efforts. Just looking at the "War of Northern Aggression" says a lot.

Hm, looks like we chased him off. I don't know if it's unfortunate or not. I thought he was entertaining.

But, anyway, it sounds like we're in a bit of an echo chamber without him. So, heychadwick , was there a particular aspect of this that you wanted to explore further? It sounds like between us we've all mastered the 'entry level history texts', so there's little point to rehash the basics.

So what exactly happened? They declared their secession, and then what? It's not immediately obvious how that leads to war unless the rest of the old country tries to stop them doing in by force. Did they attack the North then? What do you mean about trying to seize federal property?

The Confederates fired cannons at Fort Sumter (which was held by federal troops), when this fort did not surrender to the Confederacy.

Everything i know about the American Civil war I learned from the Deadlands RPG... wait, thats' no good!

The Confederates fired cannons at Fort Sumter (which was held by federal troops), when this fort did not surrender to the Confederacy.

More specifically, South Carolina and several other states officially declared their secession. As part of this process, a series of Federal forts surrendered (and evacuated, basically), because no one wanted to be a fort just surrounded by folks who have decided they're at war with you, right?

President Buchanan tried to reinforce the fort (which US Army Major Anderson had shifted his guys into, for a nice defensive position compared to their usual post), and the reinforcement ship was fired upon. Fort Sumter -- which controls Charlestown's harbor, making it really important symbolically AND practically -- was then surrounded, and the troops inside soundly bottled up and, well, running low on stuff.

Whether to reinforce, and HOW to reinforce, Fort Sumter was basically Lincoln's first big crisis after being made President. He handled it, in retrospect, really about as perfectly as he could. He formally notified the leadership of South Carolina that he had American soldiers in that fort, that he wasn't going to let them starve to death, and that he was sending supply ships. Pickens, the SC governor, was like "NUH UH," and demanded they empty the fort immediately. They didn't evacuate, so the Confederacy opened fire. No one died in the opening exchange, but Anderson (inside Sumter) knew they were outgunned, so he waited it out about a day -- for honor's sake -- and then surrendered.

That got broad international support for the North (since the South started the shooting), and Lincoln called up the troops. It also pushed several more states to secede from the Union (since poop just got real and it was time to pick a side).

I'll just add that the south also demanded taking over all federal property. There was an armory in Fort Sumter and the South wanted it.

Side fact: Major Anderson was an old artillery instructor at West Point (army academy) and the commander firing on him was his old student.

@Mike: Where to take it? Eh....just let it go where it goes....even if no where.

Fun Fact: the ship that tried to reinforce Sumter, and was fired upon, was named the Star of the West, and an award named for her was created for the top cadet in South Carolina. (sorry, I forget which institute specifically)

Also, FWIW:

When I was taking my Masters classes, we were told that referring to the ACW as "the War of Northern Aggression" or even "the War Between the States" would get us "laughed out of" any professional/scholarly proceedings.

So what exactly happened? They declared their secession, and then what? It's not immediately obvious how that leads to war unless the rest of the old country tries to stop them doing in by force. Did they attack the North then? What do you mean about trying to seize federal property?

You should understand that slavery was far less a concern going into the war than was the disintegration of the Union. The North felt that, essentially, the South had no right to secede. How do you put a country back together, if not by force?

So what exactly happened? They declared their secession, and then what? It's not immediately obvious how that leads to war unless the rest of the old country tries to stop them doing in by force. Did they attack the North then? What do you mean about trying to seize federal property?

You should understand that slavery was far less a concern going into the war than was the disintegration of the Union. The North felt that, essentially, the South had no right to secede. How do you put a country back together, if not by force?

That's not quite what other people had described. "Putting a country together by force" sounds like empire building to me.

And? You don't have to look very hard to discover that there's seldom anything noble about our past. Slavery was something of an issue, but rare was the Northerner who considered blacks to be even remote equals. It certainly wasn't the principle fighting cause of the North, not at first. You wondered how secession led to war, and preservation of the Union is the answer.

Other people have described for you how slavery left a rift between the states, and how that rift culminated in secession. Looking back at the past, it's easy to confuse causality with inevitability. You could say that slavery was a cause of the Civil War, but did secession make war itself truly inevitable?

And? You don't have to look very hard to discover that there's seldom anything noble about our past. Slavery was something of an issue, but rare was the Northerner who considered blacks to be even remote equals. It certainly wasn't the principle fighting cause of the North, not at first. You wondered how secession led to war, and preservation of the Union is the answer.

Other people have described for you how slavery left a rift between the states, and how that rift culminated in secession. Looking back at the past, it's easy to confuse causality with inevitability. You could say that slavery was a cause of the Civil War, but did secession make war itself truly inevitable?

He's totally right. Most Northerners weren't there to free the slaves. They were there to preserve the Union. That's why they are actually called the Union more often than the North. There were border states like Maryland that still had legal slavery during the Civil War.

I think that those that attempted to secede did make war inevitable.

Part of the argument from the North was that the attempted secession was illegal and not allowed. The view was that armed radicals took control of the state governments and that these were bandits and instigators, not official state governments they were in conflict with. It actually caused a lot of issues for things such as prisoner swaps. Both sides wanted to swap prisoners, but the North didn't recognize the CSA as a govt or official body. This was an issue as there were rules of war for two sides that fought, but they didn't work in this situation as one side was not considered legitimate. It took a long while for things to get worked out and have prisoner swaps.

As a side note, there are a number of modern historians who want to slam Lincoln for not really wanting to free the slaves. They say that it's something that happened due to the Emancipation Proclamation was made due to popular movements and a change in thinking, but that the actual Proclamation didn't actually free the slaves. These historians argue that Lincoln didn't really want to free the slaves.

I disagree, though. I think that it was part of Lincoln's brilliance. He always co-opted his political opponents into his own cause. He even grabbed the highest ranking opponent from the other political party and made him Sec. of State (Seward) during the war. How can the political opposition blame everything on Lincoln when their main guy was Sec of State! To me, Lincoln was a Republican. That is the party that was created to stop slavery. There is no way that he didn't want it to happen. What I think is that he knew that those that didn't want to free the slaves would be up in arms over any such Proclamation. What Lincoln did was make the Proclamation written to free slaves that were owned by rebels as a way of seizing the property of rebels as punishment. Lincoln could turn to those that still wanted slavery and say that he wasn't actually freeing the slaves. He was just punishing rebels. What I think is that Lincoln knew it would shift the public consciousness far enough that it would become the end results. It's total speculation on my part, but I believe that Lincoln was a far seeing man and very intuitive.

Partly, as I understand it.

The EP was signed at a time when the Union was getting the crap beaten out of it in nearly every battle, and civilian morale was tanking. Lincoln used the EP as an addition to the Union's cause, which helped to rally the backing of the civilians in the northern states.

However, it only applied to areas under the control of the Union, so it didn't auto-free the slaves in the South (unless the Union held the area).

Correct, but it became the document that pretty much ended slavery, though, even though that's not what it said.

I think it's entirely plausible to say that the South left the US out of fear that Slavery's expansion would be stopped, and that the North was more interested in preventing the disintegration of the Union than it was in slavery. I don't think those conflicting motives are at all contradictory.

I also think that while many white northerns may have had no lovevof black people, they hated slavery. Again, the two things are not mutually exclusive. The fact that a war to preserve the Union was less popular in the North than a war to end slavery is an interesting fact.

Yes. The North didn't go to war to stop slavery. They went to preserve the Union. The South didn't go to war because they were racist. They went because the economic model required slavery to keep those that were rich to stay rich. They used propaganda to get the rest of the South on their side. They left because they felt their fortunes would be lost. At least that's how I saw it. As in, that's my opinion.

Yes. The North didn't go to war to stop slavery. They went to preserve the Union. The South didn't go to war because they were racist. They went because the economic model required slavery to keep those that were rich to stay rich. They used propaganda to get the rest of the South on their side. They left because they felt their fortunes would be lost. At least that's how I saw it. As in, that's my opinion.

Interesting thought and very well said.

I was following along and thought that these posts made the point that the war was essentially about slavery. While what you said is true it does, in my opinion, reflect a deeper understanding of the entire issue; it also is easily taken out of context to appear that slavery was not the main issue of the war.

Or to dumb it down might one say that the war was about economics, the economics of slavery. Even though the northern states fought to preserve the Union, slavery sooner or later was going to become an issue.

Just a thought...

Though... the way it is worded seems to deflect the slavery issue.

One of the better quotes I have heard regarding the civil war was as follows:

If you know very little about the civil war, you think that it was all about slavery.

As you study it more, you start to agree that it might in fact be about something else.

Then, when you have really studied the civil war, you realize "Nope, pretty much just slavery."

I like this quote. There is a lot of nuance to the American Civil War. There are a lot of perspectives to take on it. Soldiers in the north were not fighting to stop slavery. Soldiers in the south were not fighting to keep slavery. The south tried to secede when an abolitionist won the presidency of the country. When in doubt, follow the money. The cotton oligarchs truly owned public opinion in the south and were able to frame the issue to make it appear not about slavery. They were going to lose a lot of money if slavery was made illegal. Look at the secessionist constitutions that they passed. Look at what moment they picked to secede. It's all about enshrining slavery.

One of the better quotes I have heard regarding the civil war was as follows:

If you know very little about the civil war, you think that it was all about slavery.

As you study it more, you start to agree that it might in fact be about something else.

Then, when you have really studied the civil war, you realize "Nope, pretty much just slavery."

I like this quote. There is a lot of nuance to the American Civil War. There are a lot of perspectives to take on it. Soldiers in the north were not fighting to stop slavery. Soldiers in the south were not fighting to keep slavery. The south tried to secede when an abolitionist won the presidency of the country. When in doubt, follow the money. The cotton oligarchs truly owned public opinion in the south and were able to frame the issue to make it appear not about slavery. They were going to lose a lot of money if slavery was made illegal. Look at the secessionist constitutions that they passed. Look at what moment they picked to secede. It's all about enshrining slavery.

I agree, I'm the one that originally suggested reading the Mississippi Secession declaration.

Quite simply, it leaves no doubt.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

It is clear in their own words "There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union". Slavery or secession.

One of the better quotes I have heard regarding the civil war was as follows:

If you know very little about the civil war, you think that it was all about slavery.

As you study it more, you start to agree that it might in fact be about something else.

Then, when you have really studied the civil war, you realize "Nope, pretty much just slavery."

I like this quote. There is a lot of nuance to the American Civil War. There are a lot of perspectives to take on it. Soldiers in the north were not fighting to stop slavery. Soldiers in the south were not fighting to keep slavery. The south tried to secede when an abolitionist won the presidency of the country. When in doubt, follow the money. The cotton oligarchs truly owned public opinion in the south and were able to frame the issue to make it appear not about slavery. They were going to lose a lot of money if slavery was made illegal. Look at the secessionist constitutions that they passed. Look at what moment they picked to secede. It's all about enshrining slavery.

I think the average Southerner knew well and good that they were fighting for slavery. I cannot recall the precise statistic, but it was something like a scant 1% (or less) of the southern population owned more than 10 slaves. The statistic is a bit misleading when you take into account the fact that every bit of southern life revolved around the large plantation owners - if you were not one yourself, you associated with one, worked with one, or in some other manner lived your life in the shadow of one. What's more, you aspired to be one . The Civil War was not born out of a sudden cultural frustration; there was quite a bit of pent up stress and aggression in the years leading up to it, stemming as much from the lower classes as the higher ones. Look at Bleeding Kansas, or the Kansas-Nebraska act which instigated it. Hell, look as far back as the Missouri Compromise. Less affluent southerners were upset because they couldn't fulfill the great American fantasy: moving to a new place and making their own fortunes off the backs of slaves, just as their forebears had done.

I sense a strange parallel with our own modern middle-class, the staunchly conservative ones who empathize with the overly wealthy. Perhaps out of principle or just some misguided sense of entitlement, they bemoan any manner of tax increase, ignorant of the fact that in doing so they only expand the wealth gap and marginalize themselves. A digression, perhaps, to point out a common strand of blind self-interest, but I find it's never without merit to observe history repeating itself, even in the most tangential of ways.