Slavery goes back that far but the war does not. You could trace some of the roots to Nazi Germany clear back to the 18th century but it wouldn't be fair to the Germans to say WWII actually broke out in say 1722.
Why do you like a Confederate victory?
- Thread starter FinalTemplar
- Start date
Slavery goes back that far but the war does not. You could trace some of the roots to Nazi Germany clear back to the 18th century but it wouldn't be fair to the Germans to say WWII actually broke out in say 1722.
The war over Slavery started with the first raids on the West African coastline by the Spaniards and Portuguese in the 15th century. The West Africans certainly felt like they were in a war. The war ended by-and-large with Brazil's abolition of the foul practice four hundred years later.
Jeb Stuart mashup??
You are aware the Europeans did not go to West Africa looking for slaves right? And that slavery was already a well established economic practice amongst the peoples of West Africa, and that it was the Africans themselves who realized the economic bonanza of enslaving their enemies to sell to the Europeans in order to gain access to things like guns?
The Europeans simply took advantage of a pre-existing system of economics which they themselves were passing familiar with. Hell it was later Europeans who wiped out the practice.
The war over Slavery started with the first raids on the West African coastline by the Spaniards and Portuguese in the 15th century. The West Africans certainly felt like they were in a war. The war ended by-and-large with Brazil's abolition of the foul practice four hundred years later.
Jeb Stuart mashup??
The vast majority of slaves were simply bought from African leaders. This isn't anything unique as before the rise of the Russian Empire most slaves in Europe were Slavs.
Exactly, let us not rewrite history(at least outside an ATL since that is the point
) so we are more PC.TFSmith121
Banned
And once they started, they sure kept going back for more
And once they started, they sure kept going back for more ...
Countdown to "but the Africans started it ... and slavery is in the Bible..."
So is stoning people to death for talking back to their parents, but it doesn't mean the message of Christianity (for example) really revolves around that particular item...
Best,
The war over Slavery started with the first raids on the West African coastline by the Spaniards and Portuguese in the 15th century. The West Africans certainly felt like they were in a war. The war ended by-and-large with Brazil's abolition of the foul practice four hundred years later.
And once they started, they sure kept going back for more ...
Countdown to "but the Africans started it ... and slavery is in the Bible..."
So is stoning people to death for talking back to their parents, but it doesn't mean the message of Christianity (for example) really revolves around that particular item...
Best,
TFSmith121
Banned
I'd say the one that began with the legal enslavement
I'd say the one that began with the legal enslavement of human beings, essentially at gunpoint, in these United States.
The one that allowed the sale of the same human beings as livestock.
That was - see F. Douglass et al - a fairly common intepretation of the conflict at the time, as in the "drawn by the lash, drawn by the sword" meme of Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural.
That got downplayed by umpteen decades of Dunning-esque blundering generation tropes and moonlight and magnolias tripe, but no one believed that in 1865, even the ex-rebels ... took until at least 1866 for it to all become a conflict over tariffs.
There's a reason that a work like Edward Baptist’s new book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, is so worthwhile; it brings the horror of slavery as capitalism taken to the nth degree (not unlike George Fitzhugh's musings on "white" slavery) back into the discussion.
Best,
I'd say the one that began with the legal enslavement of human beings, essentially at gunpoint, in these United States.
The one that allowed the sale of the same human beings as livestock.
That was - see F. Douglass et al - a fairly common intepretation of the conflict at the time, as in the "drawn by the lash, drawn by the sword" meme of Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural.
That got downplayed by umpteen decades of Dunning-esque blundering generation tropes and moonlight and magnolias tripe, but no one believed that in 1865, even the ex-rebels ... took until at least 1866 for it to all become a conflict over tariffs.
There's a reason that a work like Edward Baptist’s new book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, is so worthwhile; it brings the horror of slavery as capitalism taken to the nth degree (not unlike George Fitzhugh's musings on "white" slavery) back into the discussion.
Best,
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I'd say the one that began with the legal enslavement of human beings, essentially at gunpoint, of human beings in these United States.
The one that allowed the sale of the same human beings as livestock.
That was - see F. Douglass et al - a fairly common intepretation of the conflict at the time, as in the "drawn by the lash, drawn by the sword" meme of Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural.
That got downplayed by umpteen decades of Dunning-esque blundering generation tropes and moonlight and magnolias tripe, but no one believed that in 1865, even the ex-rebels ... took until at least 1866 for it to all become a conflict over tariffs.
There's a reason that a work like Edward Baptist’s new book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, is so worthwhile; it brings the horror of slavery as capitalism taken to the nth degree (not unlike George Fitzhugh's musings on "white" slavery) back into the discussion.
Best,
Well, for a certain value of the word "war", I guess I'll agree with that. Though even at the time, not everyone agreed that the war they were fighting was primarily over ending slavery. Take a look at the Union recruiting posters -- you'll see a hundred "Save the Union" mottoes for every one of anything else.
It isn't that "The Africans started it" but that slavery goes back to the dawn of man and ALL races and virtually ALL cultures either used slaves or were slaves or both before the 19th century. Dumping ALL the blame on Europeans or Americans is both inaccurate and unfair. It is similar to blaming ALL drug addiction on Asians or Africans even though it is and always has been a widespread problem.
I'd say the one that began with the legal enslavement of human beings, essentially at gunpoint, of human beings in these United States.
The one that allowed the sale of the same human beings as livestock.
That was - see F. Douglass et al - a fairly common intepretation of the conflict at the time, as in the "drawn by the lash, drawn by the sword" meme of Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural.
That got downplayed by umpteen decades of Dunning-esque blundering generation tropes and moonlight and magnolias tripe, but no one believed that in 1865, even the ex-rebels ... took until at least 1866 for it to all become a conflict over tariffs.
There's a reason that a work like Edward Baptist’s new book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, is so worthwhile; it brings the horror of slavery as capitalism taken to the nth degree (not unlike George Fitzhugh's musings on "white" slavery) back into the discussion.
Best,
What about Africans , Asians and Native Americans who did the same thing? Do they get a free pass? I am willing to have Europeans have their share of guilt but not the guilt of everyone else who did the same thing which happens to be virtually every culture on the planet! Slavery was an evil everyone was guilty of and needed to get past not just Europeans.
Your hyperbole has led you astray, I fear.
By acknowledging that there was an 1861-65 conflict in your second statement quoted above, you have by your own principle made yourself a racist and an advocate of continued genocide.
On the other hand, if it is possible to recognize in any way a distinct 1861-65 conflict (and clearly it is possible, you did so yourself), then in your first statement you wrongfully slandered many scores of millions of people worldwide, including many on this board.
If you refuse to distinguish between those who truly advocate racism and genocide, and those who just don't quite agree with you over the 1861-65 conflict as a distinct struggle (though, certainly, within a much longer background of violence and struggle), then I submit that you need to check your reasoning. The things are NOT ethically equal.
Further, you simply rip apart any possibility of honest, civil debate. You effectively declare a sort of intellectual jihad on even those who completely agree with you about the unbelievably filthy evil of slavery, simply because they don't also share your exact definition of when the ACW as a distinct struggle began.
I really think you need to consider your words more carefully.
So do you. I've read the above more than once, and all I understand from it is that you consider TFSmith121 a racist and an advocate of continued genocide. Which, having read his stuff on this and other threads, is somewhat less likely than finding a boiled egg up a koala bear's bum.
Then you haven't read carefully since the point is that TFSmith121 tends to label even people who mostly agree with him as racist if they don't agree with EVERYTHING he has to say on the subject.
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I assume the relevant bit of my post is:
"By acknowledging that there was an 1861-65 conflict in your second statement quoted above, you have by your own principle made yourself a racist and an advocate of continued genocide."
Here's the thing. I know TFSmith121 is neither racist nor an advocate of genocide. That's rather the point.
He stated that the mere idea that the ACW started in 1861 makes one a racist and advocate of genocide.
Then he referred to the conflict as being from 1861-5.
This would, by his own definition, make him a racist and genocide advocate.
Yet he clearly isn't either of those things. I therefore conclude that his logic was faulty, and posted what I did as an invitation to re-evaluate his statements.
If my original post was unclear, I apologize. But I in no way accuse, nor regard him, of being racist or advocating genocide. I do believe he was rather too free with accusing others of those things, however.
Maybe the entirety of human history is just one long, single world war.
And don't disagree with me over this, 'cuz if you do, that just means you're a racist. And probably a Gone With The Wind fan too.
frlmerrin
Banned
A dark evening, a bucket of axle grease, two dozen eggs and zoo full of sleepy Koalas that probability might just shoot up if I can avoid the drop bears! Mwahahaha!
Seriously, there is no need to make you point in this manner and I was really enjoying people explaining how they felt about a Confederate victory scenario before it degenerated into a squabble over daft definitions. Maybe everyone could take a step back and we could go back to the OP's original question. I was getting a lot out of the answers.
Driftless
Donor
I think most of us do see our own history through filtered lenses. I was raised in the rural North of the US in the last half of the 20th century. In my world US=good, CSA=evil (lead by slave-holding elites).
As I grew and learned more of true history, the level of good/bad became more nuanced. No society, so far as I know, has a monopoly on good vs evil.
This discussion we've had here over the last couple of days has been an enlightening and thought provoking exchange - how's that for nice and polite? I found the responses of a couple of the posters, who have an African heritage to resonate for me. Perspective does matter in these considerations. I have thought on episodes of my own life, and one that went waaaaay back to when I was 7 or 8, when I parroted back the line of Phil Sheridan's "the only good indian is a dead indian" as it was used in a popular western. That was the one and only time that I remember my father slapping my face. I was completely stunned, in part as my dad had never expressed an opinion on race. He responded by asking me if I cared to repeat that statement to Roy XXXXXXX,(our neighbor who was Ojibwe) Roy was as nice a man as God ever created and my dad's life-long friend. To this day, I remember my first thought was "I didn't really mean it", but later the utter cruelty of my thoughtlessness clicked.
All American's have grown up with the theoretical idea that "All Men are created equal". As we all know, that idea has often fallen very short of reality for substantial portions of our countrymen, throughout our history. Little by little some of those failures are being acknowledged and are works-in-progress for correcting.
Still, I cannot enjoy any CSA victory. I still cannot separate the CSA from one of it's essential self-determination rights being that of chattel slavery. Another poster pointed out that many of our AH posters try to separate themselves from our modern cultural viewpoints and they attempt to put themselves into that time frame. I can understand the principle, but I find that I have a very hard time doing that for cultures I fundamentally disagree with. It may be futile Self-Righteousness on my part, but I am OK with that.
There are others in our ranks who are far better at presenting a logical and eloquent case for Union victory than I - thank you for that!
As I grew and learned more of true history, the level of good/bad became more nuanced. No society, so far as I know, has a monopoly on good vs evil.
This discussion we've had here over the last couple of days has been an enlightening and thought provoking exchange - how's that for nice and polite? I found the responses of a couple of the posters, who have an African heritage to resonate for me. Perspective does matter in these considerations. I have thought on episodes of my own life, and one that went waaaaay back to when I was 7 or 8, when I parroted back the line of Phil Sheridan's "the only good indian is a dead indian" as it was used in a popular western. That was the one and only time that I remember my father slapping my face. I was completely stunned, in part as my dad had never expressed an opinion on race. He responded by asking me if I cared to repeat that statement to Roy XXXXXXX,(our neighbor who was Ojibwe) Roy was as nice a man as God ever created and my dad's life-long friend. To this day, I remember my first thought was "I didn't really mean it", but later the utter cruelty of my thoughtlessness clicked.
All American's have grown up with the theoretical idea that "All Men are created equal". As we all know, that idea has often fallen very short of reality for substantial portions of our countrymen, throughout our history. Little by little some of those failures are being acknowledged and are works-in-progress for correcting.
Still, I cannot enjoy any CSA victory. I still cannot separate the CSA from one of it's essential self-determination rights being that of chattel slavery. Another poster pointed out that many of our AH posters try to separate themselves from our modern cultural viewpoints and they attempt to put themselves into that time frame. I can understand the principle, but I find that I have a very hard time doing that for cultures I fundamentally disagree with. It may be futile Self-Righteousness on my part, but I am OK with that.
There are others in our ranks who are far better at presenting a logical and eloquent case for Union victory than I - thank you for that!
I suppose it is significant that I haven't read either a single CSA Victory thread or a single Nazi Victory thread.
Even though I am from the South, and even though I'm very impressed with Germany (and actively like Germans), I just don't like considering even one year's survival of either slavery or the Nazi regime. They each represented infinitely too much human misery. (1)
The funny thing is, I enjoy reading a bit of CSA battle history. That is because I like reading about human beings responding to horribly trying circumstances with a great deal of fortitude and bravery -- and say what you will, many of those Confederate soldiers were brave and plucky. But good Lord! the courage of many of those Southern ancestors of mine could hardly have been devoted to a worse cause. In a way, that's what makes it fascinating.
Why so many CSA Victory threads? My guess (in no particular order);
1) underdogism. No matter who the loser was, they lost, which makes for interest.
2) seriously misplaced nostalgia. This is not the same as racism and support of slavery, though in some cases the thread author might be those things. More often I think it involves the difficulty of viewing slavery in its actual horror at a distance of many years.
3) sympathy for homeland. This tends to come out when much of your section was burned to the ground, exigencies of war and legitimacy of war aims notwithstanding.
4) dystopianism. Exploring what happens if the bad side wins has an interest to many.
5) wrecking the USA to further one's own preferred postwar world order.
6) familiarity with the conflict. As other posters have pointed out, the ACW is among the very few incidents in American history that many people learn about. Interest will gravitate toward it, and statistically some of the resulting TLs and AHCs will involve CSA victory.
But CSA victory? Not for me, for any reason.
(1): I cannot quite equate the CSA with the Nazi regime, I just think there has to be something uniquely evil about planning and enacting the industrial-scale extermination of tens of millions of human beings. But it isn't the easiest choice to make; slavery was extraordinarily bad.)
Even though I am from the South, and even though I'm very impressed with Germany (and actively like Germans), I just don't like considering even one year's survival of either slavery or the Nazi regime. They each represented infinitely too much human misery. (1)
The funny thing is, I enjoy reading a bit of CSA battle history. That is because I like reading about human beings responding to horribly trying circumstances with a great deal of fortitude and bravery -- and say what you will, many of those Confederate soldiers were brave and plucky. But good Lord! the courage of many of those Southern ancestors of mine could hardly have been devoted to a worse cause. In a way, that's what makes it fascinating.
Why so many CSA Victory threads? My guess (in no particular order);
1) underdogism. No matter who the loser was, they lost, which makes for interest.
2) seriously misplaced nostalgia. This is not the same as racism and support of slavery, though in some cases the thread author might be those things. More often I think it involves the difficulty of viewing slavery in its actual horror at a distance of many years.
3) sympathy for homeland. This tends to come out when much of your section was burned to the ground, exigencies of war and legitimacy of war aims notwithstanding.
4) dystopianism. Exploring what happens if the bad side wins has an interest to many.
5) wrecking the USA to further one's own preferred postwar world order.
6) familiarity with the conflict. As other posters have pointed out, the ACW is among the very few incidents in American history that many people learn about. Interest will gravitate toward it, and statistically some of the resulting TLs and AHCs will involve CSA victory.
But CSA victory? Not for me, for any reason.
(1): I cannot quite equate the CSA with the Nazi regime, I just think there has to be something uniquely evil about planning and enacting the industrial-scale extermination of tens of millions of human beings. But it isn't the easiest choice to make; slavery was extraordinarily bad.)
TFSmith121
Banned
And yet again...
Thank you for making my point.
"Get past it" in terms of history would seem somewhat anti-thetical, would it not?
Best,
Thank you for making my point.
"Get past it" in terms of history would seem somewhat anti-thetical, would it not?
Best,