Thread: Robert E.Lee overrated?

Originally Posted by lwarmonger

Well sir, have political groups within the United States ever been completely cohesive?

I could make the exact same argument in the exact same way against the American Revolution... however that doesn't mean that it wasn't justified and a long time in coming (nor does it mean that there weren't significant political divisions within the colonies over revolution).

There's a difference between not being completely cohesive and publicly censuring your own over an attempt to exert "state's rights." If 1860 were today, 527 groups would run ads about Southern states flip-flopping on the issue.

Reference the American Revolution, the justification cited was a moral right to revolution based on the uninalienable rights of all men and a whole list of grievances against the crown. In contrast, Southern secession documents revolve almost entirely around the issue of slavery, which cannot be defended as a moral right for revolution. Sorry, but I don't buy the analogy.

Originally Posted by Shek

Reference the American Revolution, the justification cited was a moral right to revolution based on the uninalienable rights of all men and a whole list of grievances against the crown.

Sir, the taxes that the colonies paid was one of their chief grievances, and that with their tax burdens being substantially less than the average British citizen... As for the moral right to revolution based on "inalienable rights" the American citizen was actually the most free in the British empire (hard to control people across an ocean in the day of sail... very easy to control the population of the British Isles). And I'm sure all of the Tories would be very happy to talk about the "unalienable rights" given to them for staying loyal to Britain.

In contrast, Southern secession documents revolve almost entirely around the issue of slavery, which cannot be defended as a moral right for revolution. Sorry, but I don't buy the analogy.

The Confederate government would have lost quickly if it had tried to use the issue of slavery to mobilize the white males of the Confederacy (most of whom were poor). The Confederates were mostly fighting for their homes and their country... the same reason that most colonials were fighting Britain. However, most of what I've read seems to indicate that there was actually a much larger percentage of southerners in favor of secession than there were Americans in favor of revolution.

Slavery was the specific issue... however it was on the way out anyways. In order to secure the European support necessary for their long term independence, the Confederates would have had to at least formally emancipate their slaves sooner or later.

They went to war for it - to keep it. Thus one can more than assume that they didn't believe slavery was on the way out.

The Confederate government would have lost quickly if it had tried to use the issue of slavery to mobilize the white males of the Confederacy (most of whom were poor). The Confederates were mostly fighting for their homes and their country... the same reason that most colonials were fighting Britain. However, most of what I've read seems to indicate that there was actually a much larger percentage of southerners in favor of secession than there were Americans in favor of revolution.

More of a violent attempt to keep their own position in society. The issue of their status in society, being a dirt poor white still meant one was better then a slave in the racist caste system - along with the lack of competition from freed blacks.

The fact that those same people happily went out of their way using violence against freed slaves doesn't bode well for some view of states rights outside of the states right to enslave (their own documents showed that was THE reason to succeed) and later states right to put blacks in an inferior social position. Not a second American Revolution but a bunch of racists fighting to keep slaves.

Of course once the cause for the war becomes something else other than slavery then the Confederacy can be painted in a good light - as something else other then a bunch of racists fighting for the "states right" to enslave and to maintain a racial caste system. The "Lost Cause" viewpoint and all.

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Slavery In The Civil War Era

That left only marginal land for the vast majority of white farmers. This problem was compounded by the dominance of the planters image as the social ideal. Alternative means of advancement were unavailable, so yeomen farmers aspired to become planters themselves. They used some of their land to grow food for their family's consumption and devoted the rest to cash crops like cotton. Their hope was to produce enough to save, buy a few slaves, produce yet more, and, ultimately, accumulate the wealth that would elevate them to planter status. For most, this was a futile dream, but they remained committed to it, thereby neglecting other possible avenues for economic advancement.

Slavery in the antebellum South, then, made a minority of white Southerners--owners of large slaveholdings--enormously wealthy. At the same time, it demeaned and exploited Southerners of African descent, left the majority of white Southerners impoverished and uneducated, and retarded the overall economic, cultural, and social growth of the region. Slavery was the institution by which the South defined itself when it chose to secede from the Union. But it was the existence of slavery, with its negative impact on politics, economics, and social relations, that fatally crippled the South in its bid for independence.

Originally Posted by troung

They went to war for it - to keep it. Thus one can more than assume that they didn't believe slavery was on the way out.

Like I have said before, that may be what the landed elite who were the initiators behind secession were for, but you weren't going to mobilize all of the whites in the South around a civil war to maintain slavery, especially when the North wasn't even banning it yet.

More of a violent attempt to keep their own position in society. The issue of their status in society, being a dirt poor white still meant one was better then a slave in the racist caste system - along with the lack of competition from freed blacks.

Not the main reason most of them were fighting. The notion that blacks could be equal to whites was outside the mental horizon of whites in the South, and most whites in the North too. Maine was fighting to free the slaves, the other Union states were fighting to preserve the Union. My grandmother has a series of letters from two branches of my family that fought for the north in the civil war to their families in Pennsylvania. They sometimes talk about preserving the union, but there was not a single mention of slavery. That is hardly uncommon in letters home at that time.

The fact that those same people happily went out of their way using violence against freed slaves doesn't bode well for some view of states rights outside of the states right to enslave (their own documents showed that was THE reason to succeed) and later states right to put blacks in an inferior social position. Not a second American Revolution but a bunch of racists fighting to keep slaves.

Nothing is every that simple, and to think of it as being so is not going to get you a clear picture of why things happened in any time period.

Of course once the cause for the war becomes something else other than slavery then the Confederacy can be painted in a good light - as something else other then a bunch of racists fighting for the "states right" to enslave and to maintain a racial caste system. The "Lost Cause" viewpoint and all.

An overwhelming number of voters in those states wanted to secede from the Union. In all probability a far larger proportion than chose to revolt against England. It is very easy (and common) to get emotional about the issue of slavery, but lets not let that cloud our common sense. Lincoln didn't even talk about freeing slaves until after Antietam, and even then it was only slaves in the secessionist states that he was talking about freeing (and even then only those that states that failed to return to the Union).