You're still not doing yourself any favors by mocking the argument and jumping straight to hyperbole and stereotypes to do so. That you simply dismiss the other side of the argument as "not holding water" in such a fashion demonstrates a solid bias before you even begin to lay out your argument.
Edit: as to your above post, yes, this is a lot of what I've been trying to point out. You're arguing points that aren't being contested. That constitues agreement, in some shape or form.
For example, to talk about Dredd Scott as being a constitutional question of property rights is to miss the point that Dredd Scott was a SLAVE. To talk about the economic disparities between the north/south as sectional friction between an emerging industrial versus agrarian based economy, is to solely miss the point the point that the southern agrarian economy was propped up by the insitution of slavery.
Nobody's brought up Dredd Scott at all, so I don't see any real use in continuing to harp on this example. So you're saying that two societies with vastly different modes of production would not have come into conflict over economic policy? Nullification Crisis? You were the one expecting the South to have the foresight to fall in line with the North's industrialization. Slavery alone did not cause the south to retain an agricultural socioeconomic structure. Hell, the reason that slavery died out in many of the original northern colonies was simply because it wasn't profitable enough. Cold temps don't mix well with cash crops.
Still, though, you hurt your argument again using "propped up," as if in the complete absence of slavery such an economy could and would not have existed. It is, however, and adequate term if you consider that Southerners were afraid the Lincoln would sweep in and knock out the element that "Propped Up" their entire society. It would've been like a collapsing table, and the whole of the South would've crashed to the ground.
More importantly, re-reading your posts shows some pretty striking differences in perspective. I think it is clear that you view the angry invading Yankess as demons that unjustly raped and pillaged the south. Conversely, you view the south as the honorable gentlemen in a disagreement with their unruly neighbors to the north. You toss out feigned indignation at Sherman's March but fail to mention Andersonville or Fort Pillow. You make naive references to northern blockades not letting in food and medicine - as if supposing the north should allow these goods in upon a southern gentleman's word that it wouldn't be used to support the military?
Yes, please stereotype me some more, I've not had enough. I have not once mentioned morality or justice in any of this, and for good reason. The point is well established and I shouldn't have to harp on the immorality of slavery or praise the "demonic Yankee invader" just to retain my objective perspective. I haven't really done any painting that you mention so any of it taken is mere inference. If someone else sees me gushing with romanticism about the South, I would invite them to point it out. If I do go overboard trying to make a point, it is merely to try and counter the utter lack of respect that you show for Southerners (I dare say) still.
There again, Andersonville is a moot point. The North had even more numerous prisons that were just as horrible. The thing is that the North actually had the supplies by the end of the war to clothe and feed its prisoners. The South didn't have enough for its own army, much less the tens of thousands of prisoners. But let's do remember, the Union was fighting a war and would spare no one, as per Grant (and another main tenet you base your argument on), and so when the cartel stopped/broke down, the Union prisoners were left to suffer too.
But you go right on ahead and make personal attacks on me. I'm just a dumb, romantic southerner who is delusionally naive. None of the examples used above point out anything about southern character or its apparent superiority over that of the North that you read into all of my sentences. I merely use these things to demonstrate that the North was ruthless in its prosecution of the war, which was originally meant to counter your argument about Lincoln and the North extending the hand of friendship with gradual emancipation and compensation and the South knowingly spitting on it to go to their own doom.
I only try to argue against your broad strokes that paint all Southerners as selfish children who are unhappy and are going to "take their ball and go home". I actually haven't once mentioned anything about Southerners being goodly, altruistic people with pure motives that place them on morally superior ground to anyone, really. But if giving Southerners agency to have a mind of their own and utilize it is romanticizing the picture, well then we start to see how this whole argument gets started and is perpetuated.
This idealized view of the south fits neatly in with the revisionist and apologist attempts to paint the south as a victim. However, no where in any of your responses do you make a categorical statement saying that slavery was wrong - if anything there is a romantic undertone to your comments about southern society and ideology. You continue to comment about a need to manintain the economic order and opportunity for the poor white man while neglecting the plight of millions of slaves in chains.
Here again, I've never even briefly mentioned the immorality of slavery. I don't think anyone ever disagreed with you or anyone else about it. What I am arguing, however, is that the South wasn't a bunch of uppity dandies who got upset when the North wouldn't let them keep their toys. I am not painting the South as a victim as far as I'm aware - but again any outsiders are free to correct me there. I'm making them into real people and real motives while you are content to paint largely caricatures, both of myself and of Southerners in general leading up to and during the Civil War.
I'm not neglecting Slavery as an issue at all. I am treating it as a given: a well established and truly integral piece of southern society at the time. It's become the definitive rail spike in arguments about the causes of the Civil War to be hammered on until the cows come home.I have even gone so far as to point out the fact that slavery as it developed in the antebellum south was turned into a strictly racial issue for a fairly specific purpose. If that doesn't condemn the whole thing then I don't know what could. I'm not judging with hindsight to say that Southerners ought to have known better. They had to work within the framework that they had, and what they saw coming at them was the Federal Government reaching out into their neck of the woods and kicking out the leg that propped up the South's socioeconomic structure. They did not like that for many reasons.
Furthermore, make no mistake that neither side had a monopoly on cruelty or brutality in that civil war. The fact of the matter was that the south was in rebellion and the fastest way to end that rebellion was to crush the will of the people through destruction of industry, transportation and farms that fueled the machine. Sure Sherman burned Georgia - there were plantations, farms, and homes that were supplying the southern armies. By displacing those persons it added a burden to the CSA, thereby multiplying the impact of the damage and exponentially decreasing the time needed to collapse the system. Sure the north enacted this policy on a tremendous scale, but one only needs to read about Rome and Carthage and the 30 Years War to see other examples of regions decimated during warfare.
Yes, you are just confirming my point, but really it isn't all that relevant to the argument anymore since its counterpoint had been abandoned. The point I think moreso is not that Rome and Carthage tore each other up, but moreso the fact (as Shelby Foote has noted) that it was almost inconceivable that Americans could do this one another. It was simply unfathomable at the time.
Was it anymore cruel to enslaving millions? I will let you answer that question.
Again, not a point in dispute. Don't pretend to put a weighty subject on me because you have essentially already categorized me as a stereotypical Southerner who will inevitably fail under its immense pressure due to my underlying sympathies and delusions. The point could be made, as you have done, that Southerners were no more cruel than Northerners, many of whom were eager to exact revenge for all number of things. So to demean Southerners endlessly gets a bit tired. Humans are deeply flawed on the whole when it comes to "othering".
That being said, there is a difference between honoring one's ancestors and appreciating their courage and sacrifice on the battlefield and a misguided attempt to reframe an argument over a period of 150 years. I don't think anyone from the south who espouses those views are "closet racist neo-Confederates." I simply think their argument holds no water because you cannot seperate the institution of slavery from the social/political/economic/legal-consitutional issues that precipitated the war.
Right off the bat, I don't appreciate the comments about me bashing the south. The fact of the matter is I actually like the south - have a home in Virginia - and married my wife whose family is from Alabama! I guess that makes me a carpet-bagger in fine Yankee tradition.
WHERE?? My God, show me where the difference is. Because by attempting to do the former, I am immediately and irreconcilably lumped in with the latter. This is why I had to keep my mouth shut previously: Opening your mouth condemns you openly and plainly. How is one supposted to honor those ancestors when the entire argument is honestly based on the premise that they were all immoral and terrible people? Who else could have had slaves, right? So when you find the middle ground, do let me know. Otherwise I know better than to stick my neck out of my shell on that one because it gets to be like arguing politics: there is no discussion, only dismissal and quite possibly hatred. Case in point: Southerners did a lot of dumb things with the Condederate Battle flag after the Civil War.But if anyone, and I mean
anyone displays that flag as an attempt to honor the sacrifices of their ancestors
in battle, they are hung out to dry (yes I know there are plenty of racists, etc. that use it too). But put up the government flag and keep your mouth shut and no one knows the difference. Don't vocally bring the subject up, God forbid. Just keep your honoring to yourself and just maybe no one will slander you.
Northerners to this day [u[love[/u] to do this (please note: I am not stereotyping all Northerns, nor all Southerners with any of this, merely pointing out that the sectional issues are still very much alive and the coals can be fanned to flame at a moment's notice). Come stomping in on this argument and if you protest, you've outed yourself.
States are no longer sufficient lines of delineation for where one's "sympathies" lie. Nor does residing somewhere make you a shoo-in for one viewpoint or another, or give you a miss if an argument like this goes against you. Virginia, on the whole, is just a suburb of DC (NoVA, but still). Likewise, places like Florida might well be said to be composed in the majority by transplants, so most of that is a moot point as well. Besides, I'm from Texas, and have been told on various occasions that I am no Southerner, and yet here I am arguing this point. I might even marry me a girl from Pennsylvania, and then I'd be a glavanized Yankee! How could the argument of a traitor hold water?!
Your "joke" there at the end of your post does completely negate the credit you were trying to build as a "Southerner" the paragraph before it, though. So, uh, well done there?
"The time for compromises is past, and we are now determined to maintain our position and make all who oppose us smell Southern powder, feel Southern steel."
Jefferson Davis, 1861
