Who is this "Martin Luther King" and why does he have his day off today?

[Imran Siddiqui]

gribbler

[MichaeltheGreat]

gribbler

That's what I get for casting pearls before swine.

[kentonio]

Nope. Not many southerners (and none that I know) defend either (a) the institution of slavery, or (b) the ineptitude of CSA politicians and policy.

Considering that the Lost Cause movement served to keep blacks in a state not that far removed from their original slave condition, I'm not really sure how you can make that assertion. Even today there are defenders of the south who make wildly offensive comments about how the blacks didn't have such a bad deal under slavery, and we're not just talking about nutty cabin dwellers here.

Just last October an Arkansas GOP candidate was found to have written in his book:

the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise.

But hey, anyone can be a candidate right? So how about Loy Mauch, an actual sitting state representative, again from Arkansas?

Nowhere in the Holy Bible have I found a word of condemnation for the operation of slavery, Old or New Testament. If slavery was so bad, why didn’t Jesus, Paul or the prophets say something?

This country already lionizes Wehrmacht leaders. They go by the names of Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, etc. These Marxists not only destroyed the Constitution they were sworn to uphold, but apostatized the word of God. Either these depraved infidels or the Constitution and Scriptures are in error. I’m more persuaded by the word of God.

Now it's obviously easy to find a crazy state representative, and it doesn't make the case on its own, but my point is that even today the movement to defend and deflect from the deep wrongs of the south have some pretty dark undercurrents. What I find far more worrying though is when perfectly reasonable people find themselves accidentally helping that cause without even realizing the implications of their position.

I know someone already Godwined, and I hate to do the same myself (but I'm going to anyway ) but it's the same comparison you can make with the Nazi movement. If in a hundred years you have Germans defending the Reich on the position that Germany got a pretty ****ty deal from Versaille and that some of the land they reconquered was stolen from them after WWI, would that feel ok? As long as they explain that they aren't defending the mass genocide of the Jews? How about if they point out that the Jews got a pretty ****ty deal in the rest of Europe at that time too? That still feeling comfortable?

I don't think anyone is trying to accuse everyone defending the south of being a closet klan member who just loves themselves some slaves, but by stepping into any form of Southern apologist argument you're standing on the side of not only some pretty ****ing sick people from back then, but also some pretty sick people now. It's also counterproductive to helping today's south, a victim complex doesn't exactly help a region grow healthily.

Plus, and probably worst of all, it puts you on the same side of the argument as Ben, and if that doesn't tell you that you've picked the wrong side, nothing will.

[MrFun]

Nice job of Godwinizing. The "Lost Cause" revisionism is really not much compared to the on-going yankee revisionism about everything from yankee participation and financial investment in slavery, to yankee racism, to the role that pursuit of economic dominance played in "free state" vs. "slave state" relations. No, the yankees were being so nice, and they were attacked by those big bad slave-abusing southerners, and since slavery was such an evil thing that all yankees despised, the ppor yankees had to shed all that blood to free the slaves.

Sounds much nicer than the facts that yankee banks and the shipbuilding industry made nice fat profits off of slaving, or that dominance of cotton supply and use of tariffs as an anti-competitive measure to force southern trade with yankee states in lieu of more competitive trade with Europe was just one component (as was talk of abolition, which was a radical minority view) of economic warfare already being waged by yankee states against the south.

I did not Godwinize. If we follow your logic that we can never take any historical account of any war written by the victorious side, then you need to apply that logic to historical accounts of other wars, such as World War II. All books on World War II written by historians from United States, Britain, France, or whatever other victorious country should be thrown out right?

I never said that racism did not/does not exist in the North. Nor did I ever claim that there was no support for slavery in the North.

To think that the North was free of racism or pro-slavery support is as idiotic as the neo-Confederate chest thumping rhetoric that's suppose to pass for history "facts."

[MrFun]

Nope. Not many southerners (and none that I know) defend either (a) the institution of slavery, or (b) the ineptitude of CSA politicians and policy.

Lost Cause revisionism was primarily a regional thing, not national, except when it was convenient to adopt for other purposes (e.g. the northern and western spread of the second wave Kluckers in the 1920s and northern white hostility to blacks in general).

Yankee revisionism is more pervasive in a couple of respects - on the smaller scale, yankee revisionism seeks to counter Lost Cause revisionism regarding reconstruction and carpetbaggers. There was plenty of corruption from the carpetbaggers - a lot of these were the same folks who'd bought "permits to trade with the enemy" issued by Chase's agents. Being a carpetbagger was a money making opportunity for most. Not near all, but most. There was a lot of good done by principled yankee missionaries and such, but that wasn't the political machine norm.

The second, bigger part of yankee revisionism is that whole "aw, shucks, we just done it for freedom and sweetness and light because Amurka's the good guys in the world" - the same sort of thing that minimized native genocide and cultivates that whole "Amurka's the beacon of goodness and light and righteousness in the world" horse**** that's been used to justify every yankee intervention everywhere.

You couldn't raise generations of school children to be unquestioning "Amerca is #1" Pay-tree-ots who blindly supported the government if you explored the effects of good ol' greed and economic dominance in relations between the states.

I agree, MTG. Anyone who thinks there was no corruption in the Southern state Reconstruction governments under the Republicans or who thought white Northerners only wanted to free blacks are idiots, just as much as anyone who believes in the "Lost Cause" chest thumping rhetoric.

[MrFun]

You couldn't raise generations of school children to be unquestioning "Amerca is #1" Pay-tree-ots who blindly supported the government if you explored the effects of good ol' greed and economic dominance in relations between the states.

But it's okay for folks like you and others to never question the Southern "Lost Cause" crap and just accept being spoon-fed that stuff as "facts," right?

[MichaeltheGreat]

LOL yeah in a fictional universe where the South had far more manpower and resources it could have conquered the North just as the North conquered the South in our universe.

The yankee leadership needed four years and massive advantages in manpower and materiel. All the south needed was anything close to parity. That yankee victory was inevitable if they persisted long enough is indisputable.

[MichaeltheGreat]

But it's okay for folks like you and others to never question the Southern "Lost Cause" crap and just accept being spoon-fed that stuff as "facts," right?

That's the problem with you northerners. Limited comprehension. I'm not a "Lost Causer" and never have been. The whole Lost Cause shtick started with Ol' Jubilee, to cover his ass and others, starting from two presumptions. First, General Lee, God rest his valiant soul, was beyond reproach. (Which is pretty much true if you frame the question correctly and pay attention to the important stuff, which was how Lee transformed the Army of Northern Virginia). Second, ol' Jubiliee and his ilk were, of course, beyond reproach (which was bull****, they're the ones who did the most to lose the damn war), so who to blame? That was how the Lost Cause started, then this Pollyanna gone with the wind horse**** followed.

The legality of secession (not the reasons, whether it was a smart move or ultimately beneficial, etc.) is a separate issue.

As for the "nobility" of the south, and "the destruction of the suthern way of life," don't make me laugh in the first case, and I give not a **** in the second. My people were not plantation aristocracy in the deep south plantation sense.

Yankee revisionists and Lost Causers actually have a lot in common in their world views.

Both believe in a monolithic south - yankees like their vision of ignernt, slave-whuppin' traters who was all interested in oppressing the poor slaves just for fun while the noble yankees were doing God's work to free the slaves. Lost Causers like their vision of an idyllic, noble southern aristocracy whose rights were violated.

Reality is that secession motivation varied with the 7 deep south states seceding over slavery, Maryland and Missouri futilely declaring themselves neutral due to internal division, Kentucky declaring itself neutral for other reasons, the slave state of Delaware staying in the union, and Arkansas, Tennessee and especially North Carolina and Virginia seceding for different reasons. The southern aristocracy was pox on the earth just like the yankee industrialists and robber barons.

The north didn't go to war over abolition - abolotion was a radical minority doctrine about which the majority of northern voters and politicians frankly didn't care until much later. The ultimate rivalry was not "slave" vs. "free" it was "supplier" vs. "manufacturer." Just ask the Spragues how much they'd care about abolition if it happened to go against their economic interest. Sorry that economic dominance and political power doesn't sound as sexy to you as "freeing the slaves" but preservation of the union by force was driven by considerations of power and dominance. And the North had no problem with indirect participation in slavery and profiting from it for as long as convenient, either.

So sorry, you can take your Lost Cause and put it with the same "nobly free the poor downtrodden slaves" BS.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Considering that the Lost Cause movement served to keep blacks in a state not that far removed from their original slave condition, I'm not really sure how you can make that assertion. Even today there are defenders of the south who make wildly offensive comments about how the blacks didn't have such a bad deal under slavery, and we're not just talking about nutty cabin dwellers here.

Well, you are. You're talking Arkansas politicians. And yeah, there's a Klan membership in the south (though more white supremacists in the west than any other region. When you've got several tens of millions of people to work with, you can find pretty much any point of view. I tend mostly to hang out with people who can muster three digits of IQ, so that pretty much writes off the Ozarks, swamp runners and deep south types, thank you.

Now it's obviously easy to find a crazy state representative, and it doesn't make the case on its own, but my point is that even today the movement to defend and deflect from the deep wrongs of the south have some pretty dark undercurrents. What I find far more worrying though is when perfectly reasonable people find themselves accidentally helping that cause without even realizing the implications of their position.

Just because most people are scientifically and historically illiterate and can't understand concepts such as scope and context, doesn't mean the rest of us have to join the lowest common denominator. Now you'll never find me defending the institution of slavery, or pieces of offal like Forrest, or Confederate politicians in general, or much of anything else along those lines. But historical distortion of any stripe, and yankee revisionists are just as bad as Lost Causers in that regard, do not solve anything or contribute anything useful. It's funny how yankee industrialists and mercantilists can be rat bastards when talking about railroads and the Grangers, or the coal mine wars, Molly Maguires, etc., or Haymarket square, but when it comes to their response to southern plantation owners whuppin' on darkies, why, they were God fearing abolitionists too. Greed and power could never have been a factor.

I admire people like John Adams and John Quincy Adams who were unabashed abolitionists talking against the immorality of slavery when they had nothing to gain, not many people cared, and they were not in a position to derive any economic competitive advantage. Liberal Christian clergy who were abolotionists had nothing to gain either, but many politicians were heavily invested in, and beholden to parties who had a substantial interest in the intense economic rivalry between northern manufacturing and southern material producing and product consuming interests.

I know someone already Godwined, and I hate to do the same myself (but I'm going to anyway ) but it's the same comparison you can make with the Nazi movement. If in a hundred years you have Germans defending the Reich on the position that Germany got a pretty ****ty deal from Versaille and that some of the land they reconquered was stolen from them after WWI, would that feel ok?

"Defending the Reich?" or explaining how Versailles both fed into German nationalism and inflicted such hardship on the Germans that *******s like Hitler could arise? They're two different things.

Just as defending the Confederacy (and idiots like Davis and Stephens) vs, the constitutional question of whether a state was irrevocably bound to and subordinate to the Union are two different things.

As long as they explain that they aren't defending the mass genocide of the Jews? How about if they point out that the Jews got a pretty ****ty deal in the rest of Europe at that time too? That still feeling comfortable?

You're a much better Godwinizer than MrFun. Well, to reverse Godwinize, how about ignoring centuries of pogroms and persecutions and the Inquisition and the Crusades as applied to Jews, plus things like Luther's late rants and near universal anti-semitism throughout Europe and into Russia, and focusing just on the evil Nazis? Is that a helpful approach? It's a path to failure.

I don't think anyone is trying to accuse everyone defending the south of being a closet klan member who just loves themselves some slaves, but by stepping into any form of Southern apologist argument you're standing on the side of not only some pretty ****ing sick people from back then, but also some pretty sick people now. It's also counterproductive to helping today's south, a victim complex doesn't exactly help a region grow healthily.

I make no apologies for the south or for the defense of slavery. In fact, if there were any Lost Causers here, (or anywhere else I ran into), I'd demolish their revisionist houses of cards more effectively than most yankees would be able to.

Plus, and probably worst of all, it puts you on the same side of the argument as Ben, and if that doesn't tell you that you've picked the wrong side, nothing will.

Well, if it makes you feel better, you can think of Ben as a broken clock. I think I've even agreed with MrFun on some point or another.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Do you think that neo-Nazi's historical account of World War II is more accurate/factual than the victorious side's account of World War II? Maybe the Holocaust never happened! Because that was written and claimed by the victorious side! How convenient that the victorious side's account of World War II is accepted as more factual/true than any neo-Nazi's account of World War II.

I did not Godwinize.

Ah, yes, my apologies. The prefix "neo-" attached to the word "Nazi" changes everything.

If we follow your logic that we can never take any historical account of any war written by the victorious side, then you need to apply that logic to historical accounts of other wars, such as World War II. All books on World War II written by historians from United States, Britain, France, or whatever other victorious country should be thrown out right?

They should be understood as having potentially self-serving perspectives, as opposed to being taken as gospel.

[MrFun]

That's the problem with you northerners. Limited comprehension. I'm not a "Lost Causer" and never have been. The whole Lost Cause shtick started with Ol' Jubilee, to cover his ass and others, starting from two presumptions. First, General Lee, God rest his valiant soul, was beyond reproach. (Which is pretty much true if you frame the question correctly and pay attention to the important stuff, which was how Lee transformed the Army of Northern Virginia). Second, ol' Jubiliee and his ilk were, of course, beyond reproach (which was bull****, they're the ones who did the most to lose the damn war), so who to blame? That was how the Lost Cause started, then this Pollyanna gone with the wind horse**** followed.

The legality of secession (not the reasons, whether it was a smart move or ultimately beneficial, etc.) is a separate issue.

As for the "nobility" of the south, and "the destruction of the suthern way of life," don't make me laugh in the first case, and I give not a **** in the second. My people were not plantation aristocracy in the deep south plantation sense.

Yankee revisionists and Lost Causers actually have a lot in common in their world views.

Both believe in a monolithic south - yankees like their vision of ignernt, slave-whuppin' traters who was all interested in oppressing the poor slaves just for fun while the noble yankees were doing God's work to free the slaves. Lost Causers like their vision of an idyllic, noble southern aristocracy whose rights were violated.

Reality is that secession motivation varied with the 7 deep south states seceding over slavery, Maryland and Missouri futilely declaring themselves neutral due to internal division, Kentucky declaring itself neutral for other reasons, the slave state of Delaware staying in the union, and Arkansas, Tennessee and especially North Carolina and Virginia seceding for different reasons. The southern aristocracy was pox on the earth just like the yankee industrialists and robber barons.

The north didn't go to war over abolition - abolotion was a radical minority doctrine about which the majority of northern voters and politicians frankly didn't care until much later. The ultimate rivalry was not "slave" vs. "free" it was "supplier" vs. "manufacturer." Just ask the Spragues how much they'd care about abolition if it happened to go against their economic interest. Sorry that economic dominance and political power doesn't sound as sexy to you as "freeing the slaves" but preservation of the union by force was driven by considerations of power and dominance. And the North had no problem with indirect participation in slavery and profiting from it for as long as convenient, either.

So sorry, you can take your Lost Cause and put it with the same "nobly free the poor downtrodden slaves" BS.

I read a lot of primary source documents over the years that illustrate that the issue of slavery was clearly tied with westward expansion, which was the primary factor leading to the Civil War.

[MrFun]

Greed and power could never have been a factor.

I agree. There were quite a number of white Northerners who were happy to ground the South into the dirt during the Civil War for greedy/economic reasons.

Doesn't excuse ignoring the fact that slavery was the primary issue that tore our nation apart, and led to the Civil War.

[MichaeltheGreat]

The point of the westward expansion issue wasn't slaves per se, but the balance of power in the Senate in particular (since new states would be low population, they would have diluted effect in the House). Slaves in New Mexico or Arizona? Would have been ridiculous. Pairs of Senators tied to slaveholding interests maintaining parity in political power in the Senate? That was huge.

Same thing with the northern position - being able to have more "free" states would have altered the balance of power, which would have had an effect on tariffs, taxation, foreign trade and interstate commerce.

The big failure in long-term southern political vision was that they could never maintain balance of power in the Senate without some other coalition besides slavery. Western states wouldn't necessarily align with northeastern mercantile interests.

The other big failure of vision in the south was the resistance toward economic diversification. The King Cotton delusion was fatally misguided.

[MrFun]

The point of the westward expansion issue wasn't slaves per se, but the balance of power in the Senate in particular (since new states would be low population, they would have diluted effect in the House). Slaves in New Mexico or Arizona? Would have been ridiculous. Pairs of Senators tied to slaveholding interests maintaining parity in political power in the Senate? That was huge.

Same thing with the northern position - being able to have more "free" states would have altered the balance of power, which would have had an effect on tariffs, taxation, foreign trade and interstate commerce.

The big failure in long-term southern political vision was that they could never maintain balance of power in the Senate without some other coalition besides slavery. Western states wouldn't necessarily align with northeastern mercantile interests.

The other big failure of vision in the south was the resistance toward economic diversification. The King Cotton delusion was fatally misguided.

Yes, it was an issue of balance of power, tied to ..... wait for it ......





the South's interest in a slave-based economy.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Doesn't excuse ignoring the fact that slavery was the primary issue that tore our nation apart, and led to the Civil War.

Slavery was one facet of the issue. Economic assymetry and power politics was the real issue.

Even if the south had abolished slaves:

(a) the north didn't want them - Lincoln was a "moderate" who simply believed blacks couldn't function in white society, more "radical" types in his administration and northern political circles want to find a foreign country (by invasion, if need be, e.g. the invasion of Granada (Nicaragua)) to deport the slaves.

(b) a cheap paid labor driven south that controlled cotton supply (which was huge in the global economy until the war necessitated a diversity of supply from the European perspective, and led the US to issue tens of thousands of "permits to trade with the enemy" to supply the cotton the yankees couldn't steal) was not going to be acceptable to the north. Do you honest to God think that the north would be fine with an independent minded south that traded cotton to Europe for manufactured goods while northern textile mills shut down and northern manufacturers lost the southern market? That's why tariffs were required to be paid in gold, not in kind - to further reduce southern liquidity.

Abolition of slavery would have shifted the moral high ground, but it would not have affected the affected the competing interests of the northern and southern elites. Particularly as northern banks were very heavily invested in slave backed mortgages. In 1857, Ohio Life and Trust shut down with uncovered liabilities of only $7 million, and that was a major factor that deepened the 1856 recession into a full-blown panic. At the same time, I remember reading sources that northern banks held mortgages on slaveholding plantations (with both land and slaves as collateral) to the tune of $130 million. I guess the yankees were prepared to forgive or restructure that debt in event of abolition? How do you think the economic interests in the north would have reacted?