Bonger here,
I'm reading up on American history out of general interest and I'm wondering if anyone on Sup Forums knows of good historians who give a genuine account of the American Civil War. The narrative we're fed here in the UK is essentially, "Union = Good; Confederacy = Bad" and I suspect there's a lot more to it than just slave economies.
Other urls found in this thread:
sam-dickson.com
archive.org
en.m.wikipedia.org
archive.org
amazon.com
youtube.com
en.wikipedia.org
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
youtube.com
cnn.com
en.wikipedia.org
civilwar.org
twitter.com
>Union = Good Goys
Hate this meme tbqh
>Union = Good; Confederacy = Bad
really makes you think
That's exactly why I want to read more into it. The general impression given to countries outside of the US, at least in my experience, is that the CSA was an evil bunch of slave-driving racists.
The civil administration of the confederacy was borderline retarded.
>yes goyim just live under an ever expanding federal government instead of being free in a confederacy
Good goy.
You might be interested in this. It's about Lincoln more specifically, with specific chapters on Lincoln during the war and his reputation now.
The author is a regular at the Amren conferences; a lawyer who has written tomes on state law; a smart guy
sam-dickson.com
Thanks, I'll give it a read.
Rich southern plantation owners tricked poor southerners to go die for their "freedoms" (profits).
Best way to learn about Confederacy is to read up on the congressional proceedings prior to secession.
Another thing to look at is this: the Emancipation Proclamation only Fred slaves in southern states. Northern slave owners retained ownership. Slavery was a distractive issue that drew attention away from the Federalist vs anti Federalist discussion that coincided with it. In other words, the Fed Govt used slavery issue to rile people's emotions to get northern support for eroding state's rights.
It's long as shit, but detailed.
If you want to learn about the War itself read Shelby Foote's The Civil War a Narrative.
Might take a while to get through them, but they're extremely readable.
I'd also recommend Ken Burns miniseries The Civil War.
Less then half of a percent of southerners owned slaves, and the abolition movement was gaining strength in the south anyway because of the cotton gin. The southerners fought and died for states rights and a return to an idealized articles of confederation.
slavery was the excuse for the war.
like 9/11 was for iraq
the real issue was the federal government ordering the states to do all sorts of shit.taxes basically(money,big surprise right?)
slavery was already on the way out because of the"runaway slave patrols".it was a citizens duty to search for runaway slaves much like jury duty today.people who didn't own slaves(over 90% population)didn't want to chase other peoples slaves for free.plus automation was being introduced that could harvest cotton quicker and cheaper.
the south represented states rights with the north representing federal gov rights.
that's why so many people love the confederacy.
remember the victor writes the history.
The fatal flaws of the Abolitionists are that they were impatient and perfectionist. People at the time were somewhat aware of the fact that slavery was on the decline and would fall out of practice without the need for abolition. Brazil outlawed slavery peacefully a few decades later, because it became uneconomical. The Abolitionists made a conscious decision to pick a fight for the sake of virtue signaling.
Hey bong, if you are serious, read about the Battle of Pea ridge: en.m.wikipedia.org
My great great grandfather (namesake) was a NCO there, and he commanded a group of Creek Indian infantrymen. What they don't tell you is that many of the Indian nations fought for the confederacy in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and the Southwest, because the CSA was prepared to offer them autonomy.
This is also why the Union army, immediately after the war, decided to fuck up all of the plains niggers and kill off ever independent Indian nation.
But they don't tell you that, ever.
I am serious, and thanks m8. I'll add this to my reading list.
Southerner here.
There's a concentrated effort to demonize the Confederacy into a very simplified "good guy union free slaves/bad guy confederates wanted to keep slaves".
It also completely ignores the role of the Union in stripping the last of the Southern native americans of their traditional lands for siding with the rebels.
Yep. Civil war histories are becoming less accurate as time passes - perhaps because those who were alive at the time cannot correct the idealized histories.
Woodrow Wilson wrote this:
archive.org
FYI WW was the dean of history at Princeton.
Also, see Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples:
amazon.com
What you'll learn is the lead-up to the Civil War was a complicated aggregation of problems - mostly whether the agrarian South would have influence to counter the industrialized North. Slave states were important, not because slavery was important, but because it permitted agriculturally-focused states. Good luck.
Also: youtube.com
(Hmmm... where's the mention of slavery in this angst?)
The South was Right
Have you ever heard the state song of Maryland? The entire state of Maryland was very bitter at being prohibited from joining the Confederacy due to the intercession of armed, Federal troops.
If you ever muck about used book stores, keep an eye open for this series:
youtube.com
It's by Time Life Books.
It was a pointless war in which thousands of good white men were killed over the lives of blacks (who contribute vitually nil to mankind) who were on the path to freedom anyway
there's your red pill
Try to avoid getting your knowledge from Julianne Moore.
cnn.com
US government invades and annexes sovereign country, kills hundreds of thousands of people, destroys its economy, fills its cities and towns with niggers, and to this day demonizes its history and people.
There were no good or bad guys in the Civil War. One side was trying to defend it's main economy and the other was trying to free the slaves so they could deport them. But when Lincoln was assassinated that could never happen. They both had valid ways to fight each other.
I saw a mention that the South's civil administration was...retarded. Although I'm not up to speed on the totality of the civil administration, one of the most intelligent monetary policies that I've ever seen was instituted by the South. They (ahem, we) supported their (read as: our) currency with cotton, which was the premier crop at the time - supplanting sugar cane. Warehouses in Manchester were leased to house Confederate cotton, and if you were nervous about the value of the money, you strolled to the warehouse and traded. Consequentially, for most of the war, no one did.
Fucking blockade...
A lot of people in this thread are taking a more positive view of the Confederacy. While they were not the "evil slave mongering rascists" succession was not legal and the Union had every right to maintain that Union.
>The narrative we're fed here in the UK is essentially, "Union = Good; Confederacy = Bad"
Ironic, considering the UK's support for johhny reb during the American Civil War.
>General Benjamin Butler was nicknamed by the South after confiscating silverware from a woman in new Orleans. Southerners suspected he took the silverware for his personal use during the Union occupation of New Orleans, and mockingly gave him the name "Spoons."
True, but the American Civil War is a conflict that has an overwhelmingly one-sided portrayal in mainstream media and history books and I can't help but wonder why.
The English Civil War was arguably more complex in terms of motivation (War of the Three Kingdoms, Bishop's War etc) and yet the historical understanding of it is that it was more grey and grey.
>"Union = Good; Confederacy = Bad"
>By the way, we going to support the South in order weaken US but it would have been bad PR
Oi.
Because the North won. Perhaps if Lincoln was not assassinated and reconstruction more smooth we could have been taught a more nuanced history.
>people want to leave peacefully
>lets kill them all because of a book
its absurd to think they had every right
We still had the Empire back then.
Nah, fuckface. Towards the end of the war, the North made it about slavery with the emancipation proclamation. It was about states right initially. The Union decided it would look better if it was about slavery.
Sherlock Holmes novels are filled with whimsical musings on the honor of the Confederacy. Also, Holmes' distaste for blacks is humorous.
Watch this.
the aristocracy supported the Confederacy, but the working class supported the Union (even though the destruction of the Confederacy meant the loss of many of their textile jobs)
This post should have gone here:
Sherlock Holmes novels are filled with whimsical musings on the honor of the Confederacy. Also, Holmes' distaste for blacks is humorous.
Brest series
They did not leave "peacefully" the Confederates started the war by firing on Fort Sumter.
If by "book" you mean the Constitution, that is the law of the land. Simple as that.
Go look in a book you stupid son of a bitch.
Here's another Wiki for you OP.
en.wikipedia.org
I spent last Sunday walking around the battlefield park. The Confederate and Union trenches were so close they could have thrown rocks at each other. The fighting there must have been absolutely savage.
The Confederates were Brexit, the Union was the EU.
Slavery was refugee immigration.
Lincoln was Merkal.
It is a tale that keeps repeating throughout history.
>working class supported the Union
Intellectually I am assuming. Aristocracies are the ones that fund foreign interventions and trade deals with foreign nations. How did the working class brits of 1860's "Support the Union"?
Same here, U.S. history is my favorite.
We are not taught either side is bad here, but rather the union was the original government that had always existed, and the confederacy were basically just a well-knit rebellion group that were against the rights of blacks and against the government.
I don't agree with the narrative that it was a "states right" issue, it was obviously about the equal rights of black people, but i think where the USA fucked up is that the didnt mass deport the vast majority of slaves back to africa in a time where it would have not been only totally cool, but it even made sense.
What preceded the civil war was kind of an internal cold war between two competing and incompatible economic models: one agrarian and largely reliant on slavery, the other industrial and reliant on free labor. The existance of each was a threat to the other, and they were playing a zero-sum game competing for influence in government and within new western territories. It was never really about principles like states' sovereignty or the human dignity of the slaves. It was all about capital, and ultimately these two opposing models could not coexist within the same country.
The war basically did have slavery at its root cause. But to say it was a campaign of liberation by the north is a propagandistic simplification
Pretty poor analogy. Lincoln was not Merkel, as a matter of fact, when he was first elected he had no intention of abolishing slavery. He only wanted to limit it's influence in the new territories.
He only abolished slavery as a means to cripple the Confederacy during war.
It appears I am the Union shill for this thread, but it must be done.
Yep. Also, how about the theme of 'we don't want to pay someone a living wage to do [x] job, so let's bring in people from other countries where they don't know any better.' ?
In the U.S., illegal immigration is fueled by rich fucks who want brown people to clean their toilets (liberals) and pick their crops (republicans).
It seems we both had ancestors who died in muddy trenches just a stone's throw from each other, fighting other white men for the interests of elites.
The modern version of slave states, be prepared for sand dindus.
This is not strictly Civil war, but the North-South thing goes beyond that and is still alive, so you might want to check out Steve Oney's book And The Dead Shall Rise. It reopens the case of the lynching that launched the ADL, and in so doing, examines America's regional self-conception. The organizations and newspapers that rushed to the defense of the slimeball who by any reasonable measure raped and murdered his very young employee made no attempt to deal with facts and dove headfirst into rehasing stereotypes about violent, ignorant Southerners.
Closer to your topic, Dover has a two-volume anthology (The Union Reader and The Confederate Reader) which compile contemperaneous materials.
This tbqh
Lincoln didn't want the war to have anything to do with slavery, but after countless massive defeats at the hands of the CSA he was forced to do emancipation proclamation to drive volunteers for the Army and to appease nigger lovers in the congres from voting and end to the war and status quo. Ironic isn't it? If he hadn't have acted, the same assholes that were forcing the issue of slavery would have ended the war with a slave country 1 mile from Washington DC
Yep. That's why the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the Confederate states. Lincoln promised Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware that they could retain their slaves if they would stay in the Union.
Lincoln didn't have the authority to free slaves in the Union; that would take an act of Congress.
(accurate facts know no side)
What you people don't realize is poor white people were affected in extremely negative was by slavery and many were basically slaves themselves. The Scotts-Irish honor culture won't allow them to admit it but it's true. Where you think term "white trash" came from?
That's what they called your ancestors who were pretty much treated like garbage.
Slavery has only benifited the elite class, and a reoccurent them in history is identity is identity politics marginalizing the poor on the basis of race while the elites systematically exploit them all.
That's why you massive retards will vote for politicians that play on race politcs, even though they are going to fuck the working class sideways with unfair tax plans, labor laws, and environmental regulation.
You're all a bunch of retards voting against your own interest, and what's best for society.
But hey, atleast you're not a nigger!
>(((Accurate Facts)))
FTFY
Try some first hand accounts. One good southern account is Company Aytch.
You want to really cut through the murk, read the South African anti-bankster screed Inside The Bank Of South Africa, or Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man, and then relate what you learn to this situation.
The big banks are so hated that they know they have to claim to be acting on behalf of some defenseless, persecuted group.
>rehasing stereotypes about violent, ignorant Southerners.
>stereotypes
wew laddie
They did send slaves back to Africa. Liberia is created that way. But it was voluntary. You can't say you freed the slaves if capture and deport the slaves instead.
Thanks Jim. I was waiting for you to mention Indentured White Servitude.
Ken Burns is pretty knowledgeable. I'm sure he must have a web site. It was more than just slaves. It was also about states rights, one of those right was the decision of slavery. Individual states wanted the right to decide for themselves. Not the Federal Government. Photo is Jeb Stuart a Confederate cavalry General. One of the best on either side
>The narrative we're fed here in the UK is essentially, "Union = Good; Confederacy = Bad"
They were both terrible to be honest.
>My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
- Abraham Lincoln
The Truth is that slavery HAD to be ended. However, the 20% of Southerners that owned slaves were very wealthy people in very influential posts in life. We're talking judges, lawyers, industrialists and so on.
The federal government even paid these slave owners REPARATIONS, returned to them their land and even let most of them return to their government jobs after the war.
So basically the 80% of poor Southerners who owned no slaves were betrayed by the Confederacy (who forced them into the war in the very first draft on US soil) as well as the Union who destroyed the lives of everyone except the fucking slave owners.
Your best bet is to hit up the archives at a library. Tons of great stuff from the papers at the time leading up to the war.
Fucked up isn't it?
Here's some more supplementary reading for you:
civilwar.org
That's the correspondence between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee discussing Lee's surrender which effectively ended the war.
It's a must read if you're studying the subject.
The Civil War happened because they were and signed up to be "These United States" and not "The United States".
Slow encroachment of centralized government authority, a rigged election with a candidate that wasn't even on the ballot in half the states, and the denial of a states right to leave the Union.
Anyone who claims it was States rights is dishonest. It was the right to own slaves and have the practice expand to new territories that the southerners were fighting for. The South feared slavery was becoming less and less acceptable and their power would weaken with it being banned in new territories so they jumped the gun and seceded, knowing it would cause a war. The notion that it wasn't about slavery is ridiculous, especially when you think, "well gee, why were southerners so assblasted at Blacks now being equal to them in the eyes of the law that they had 100 years of Jim Crow and basically state sanctioned violence towards blacks?" The South actually opposed States rights when it came to Northern statesbeing against Slavery
>tl;dr: Go read the letters of secession to see it was precisely about slavery
>tl;dr:
they wanted to leave peacefully and control their own territory but lincoln wanted to control them so he forced a war
justifying going to war based on the law of the land and nothing else ignores what I just said about peoples right to not be attacked and killed just because they want independence
american governments have amended and broken the precious constitution dozens of times
why are you so emotional
There seems to be a lot of romanticism for the Confederacy. While they were certainly not "evil", both sides are better off from the war. The South's overeliance on a single crop (cotton) would have been their downfall. Certainly reconstruction could have been better, but you gotta blame it on the shithead who shot Lincoln.
>the 20% of Southerners that owned slaves
Holy shit you are misinformed
Racists? Secession? They may not think we are evil racists, but they surely think we are uneducated goat fuckers thanks to dipshits like you.
...
technologically and tactically, the Civil War was kind of a preview for WW1. the union used balloons for recon frequently, and we technically invented the first aircraft carrier when we launched some off of barges. the siege of petersburg had honest-to-god, 100% legit trench warfare. idk if they teach you about the war as much in bongland, but the war also had the first engagement between 2 solid metal ships. also, i think both sides used hand-cranked machine guns
What was Fort Sumter? The Confederacy initiated the war. Of course Lincoln's job was to maintain the Union and if a war was nesscarry, then by god a war must happen.
Every war has been over the control of territory. You really seem misinformed on the topic.
Agreed
Even the flags look similar to Union VS Confederate, imagine that.
(((central banks))) wanted to split up usa into a bunch of countries, like eruope is. because that's how monarchs and banks profit. lincoln saw this, and prevented it. he was killed for making the greenback.
it worries us when people today talk about usa splitting up. cascadia, texas republic, mexican sector..........will all just become (((central bank monarchs)))
Shouldn't have lost the war bud.
>tfw you will never sit and drink whiskey with Shelby Foote while he tells you southern history of the 1800s
Why the fuck should I even continue trying to live?
>Holy shit you are misinformed
Then give me the "real" figure, Cletus. Poor people could not afford slaves.
they did ask us repeatedly to withdraw from fort sumter. having an unallied foreign base/fort well within eyesight of your coastline will (rightfully) make anyone uncomfortable
The planter class controlled the government. While most Southerners did not own slaves, the people they voted for did. The loss of slavery would have destroyed the planter class. The secession was in essence a panic over Lincoln being elected, even though Lincoln was largely in the middle as far as the slavery question.
Additionally the South was losing it's economic abilities as Europe was increasingly looking elsewhere for cotton and the Northern economy was expanding wildly due to industrialization, something the South generally avoided.
While the South may not have been "evil" they were exceptionally stupid. Even "state's rights" turned out to be a liability, as the central CSA govt was unable to force individual governors to do anything. Such as the governor of Texas refusing to give his state's spare uniforms to other state's soldiers.
It was a whole bunch of stupid. Has they not seceded, they would have kept slavery as an institution for decades longer. Lincoln was in reality in no rush to free slaves.
It was a question of how to end it and transition to more modern industry.
Picture an alcoholic. He's decided to get better. Should he be trusted to retain his dignity and property, curing himself with willpower and groups, or should he be arrested and forced through a federal intervention program (in which he coincidentally loses all his property)?
No Northern bank was willing to accept a modernized, self-empancipated South, with New Orleans remaining the economic power that it had been.
The South lost a massive amount of wealth and capital in simple looting, but also from destruction. It bears comparison to how British concerns about German industry became British "outrage" over German "crimes."
Utter bullshit.
I don't care for the Confederacy and slavery was always a terrible idea that never should have happened, but secession* is a human right.
What hypocrisy, that a nation founded on the principle of peaceful secession from a government that no longer represented their interests could force it's authority upon another people.
Constitution be damned. The social contract can be voided by the people in whom real power was always invested.
And the people said "fuck the Union".
Why would the Union withdraw, they did not recognize that they were a sovereign nation and that their succession was an illegal act.
It was about 2% of White's in the south that owned slaves. Shockingly low considering the push for white guilt today.
Read about General Sherman's march across the south.
May that traitor, war criminal, son of a whore burn in hell like he burned the fields and homes of innocent southerners.
I have personally pissed on that Yankee cock sucker's grave.
The corwin amendment explains it all
why not just let the Confederacy be? do hundreds of thousands have to die just for the sake of sticking to the idea of a union? And if they say it was about black rights then as I already said blacks were already on their way to getting more rights
what a waste of blood for your 27 time amended sacred constitution
This is literally it. Still happening today
exactly my point i already tried to tell you, they should have just recognised it from the beginning for the sake of peace
The city of Petersburg is a dump these days but if you're ever in the area the national park commemorating the Siege of Petersburg is amazing. Incredibly well preserved battlefields including the famous crater where the union soldiers got the bright idea to tunnel under the Confederate line and set of a shit ton of TNT.
I really recommend Patriotic Gore by Edmund Wilson.
He gets right into how Lincoln was a dictator.
Because he understood how to end a war?
You do understand that if they let the confederacy completely secede then the united states of america would've been cut in half right?
That's like 50% of your land gone, and a fuck ton of people you could tax to feed your policies. Why don't you just let the falklands go, and that's such a smaller fraction of what this entire ordeal was between the yanks and dixie.
I disagree. While it was hypocritical, there is no refuting that, the United States was its own sovereign nation for almost 100 years and the governing rules of that nation determined secession illegal. They United States had every right to go to war and maintain that Union.
Shelby Foote
Easily the best
