What kind of lunatics were the 1861 traitors

Skipping the two thirds of the thread of "Here's what you said" "No, that's what you read" shouts, I have two points to add, that I thought of right at the beginning of the thread.

First is the word "state." In our time it means in this case, "province," and the concept of a province being a nation is absurd. But pre civil war, it meant exactly what it implies, an independent nation. Complaining the Robert Lee was a traitor because he considered himself a Virginian first and an American second is willfully mis-applying the twentyfirst century situation to the situation of the nineteenth century states.

Second, until after the ACW the question of succession was still open. I've referred to the ACW as the great plebiscite of 1861 to 65 on the subject. Getting all worked up over someone breaking a law that didn't exist at the time is more than a bit solipsistic.

And before the reader gets too incensed at my obvious trolling (that's sarcasm, btw - I've seen many instances of trolling being defined as disagreement with the gestalt view of a forum.) look at my location, unchanged from the date I joined this forum.

BTW: IBTL (In Before The Lock - if that isn't common at this forum). :rolleyes:

Actually it really didn't mean this at all. People threatened secession on this basis, but nobody was so suicidal as to pull the trigger until the founders of the CSA got butthurt over an election they deliberately sabotaged having the outcome they wanted. When you gamble on war, you need to win and win big or otherwise you get smashed and can't say boo about it. The United States had plenty of people who thought of it as a State with a capital S. Those people wore the United States Army outfit and went to fight for the chuckleheads and backstabbing hypocrites of the Confederacy to be denied the chance to create a state doomed to fail regardless due to a number of handicaps purely self-inflicted. The Civil War was a purely ideological war, and this is one of the big reasons the Civil War generation could and did accept massive losses that in a single battle outpaced an entire century's worth of the other wars the USA of the 1800s had and most of our modern wars.

Secession was never a question, it was the rallying cry of the butthurt morons who didn't like it when democracy did not give them what they wanted.
 
It's a loaded topic.

Now, 150 years later, people are still too emotional over the issue to have a rational discussion on it.

Says something about how reluctant people are to accept a pretty unambiguous definition when it means applying it to their ancestors.

Speaking as someone whose ancestors (or at least any they know of) all came over almost two generations after the mess ended and who has no particular fondness for love of country (Socialist meaning internationalist by definition in my book).
 
I think we can all agree that in hindsight, their Judgement was utterly deplorable, they reeked of incompetence, self delusion, wishful thinking, paranoia and lunatic ambition. I think that we can also agree that their cause, the maintenance and perpetuation of the institution of slavery was abhorrent, and that the best outcome of the Confederacy was ignoble defeat and banishment to the dust heap of history.

Having said that, the Confederacy was full of decent and honourable men who fought with bravery and conviction. Every cause has those.
 
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