Why do you like a Confederate victory?

TFSmith121

Banned
Take a look at the change in perspective among US

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.

Take a look at the change in perspective among US troops regarding abolition over the course of the war. Manning and Wiley both go into it, as does even Gallagher in his "Union War" book...

Best,
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Thanks, I think.

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.


Thanks, I think.;)

Best,
 
Thank you for making my point.:rolleyes:

"Get past it" in terms of history would seem somewhat anti-thetical, would it not?

Best,

No, it means that ALL people had to "get past" the stage where they used slaves. Europeans were by NO MEANS the only people who had slavery. Why should everyone else get off the hook?
 
Maybe the entirety of human history is just one long, single world war. :eek:

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.

Wait so does that mean since Clark Gable was in a movie about the Confederacy if I liked his preformance this means I supported the Confederacy and by extension genocide?? :eek::rolleyes:
 
Ah, the dreaded initials - "PC"...

3, 2, 1 to a defense of the Great Man theory of history.;)

Best,

When you single out Europeans for an evil every other race in history was guilty of you are being politically correct. Why else let everyone else off the hook?

He has you there, you're either being PC and engaging in some pretty serious white washing for pre 17th century non-European cultures, or you're spouting total nonsense.
 
He has you there, you're either being PC and engaging in some pretty serious white washing for pre 17th century non-European cultures, or you're spouting total nonsense.

Pre-17th? Slavery was illegal in all Western Countries by the 20th century. The country of Mauritania, an Islamic Republic in Africa, didn't make slavery a crime until 2007! Abolition Timeline
 
Thank you for making my point.:rolleyes:

"Get past it" in terms of history would seem somewhat anti-thetical, would it not?

Best,

Well, if slavery counts as war, then surely the "war" waged by white Europeans against black Africans was in fact just a part of a longer war which the Africans had been merrily waging against each other for millennia beforehand? And if it's whitewashing history to consider the American Civil War as starting in 1861, isn't it equally whitewashing to consider it as starting in the 16th century, given that Europeans just took part in a pre-existing traffic in slaves that had existed long before they came along? And if whitewashing history is a sign of bigotry, what exactly does that make you, Mr. Smith?
 
Wait so does that mean since Clark Gable was in a movie about the Confederacy if I liked his preformance this means I supported the Confederacy and by extension genocide?? :eek::rolleyes:

I think so, yes.

The good news is that you should be redeemable if you read enough of TFSmith's posts on the matter.

Unless you have magnolias in your garden. Then there's really no hope for you.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Thanks for the kind words...

With all due respect to some who may not know, the idea that the war that ended in 1865 began in 1861 is more than myopic; it is straightforward denialism, racism, and advocacy of continued genocide.

Edward S. Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, despite revisionists and slavery apologists, makes it quite clear when the war that ended at Appomattox actually began...

As an individual who saw the conflict's causes quite clearly once said:

"Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

See: http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html

As always, there are those who so much enjoy the pathologies of the past, they like to pretend they had continued - sad enough from Americans, but even stranger from Europeans.:rolleyes:

Who, one would think, would see the danger inherent in denying the humanity of entire groups of people based on psuedo-science.

But I digress.

Best,

Exactly how can you say that the ACW didn't start in 1861? That is, frankly, ludicrous.

The causes of the war date back to the founding of the Republic, but that is a vastly different matter. Nor did the issue end at Appomattox. The issue continues to this day.

Accusing someone of advocating genocide because they don't conform to your rather bizarre view of what war is and when it began is a massive insult and utterly unacceptable.

Kicked for a week. Take the time and look up the term war to prevent further issues
 
Pre-17th? Slavery was illegal in all Western Countries by the 20th century. The country of Mauritania, an Islamic Republic in Africa, didn't make slavery a crime until 2007! Abolition Timeline

I meant to say it as though any non-European country before the trans-Atlantic slave trade started was somehow innocent of the exact same crime they are being accused of by that logic, but you're correct in saying that logic would suggest modern slavery is somehow less repugnant too.
 
The North didnt have to fight the South. They were standing on southern soil, or as the South Carolinians viewed it, and legally its muxed at best.
The Confederacy attacked a Union military base on Union soil, then the Confederate Secretary of War announced their intention to invade the Union and seize the Union capitol. Of course the Union had to fight the Confederacy, just like the United States had to fight the Empire of Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor. There was nothing legally mixed about the status of Ft Sumter, the land had been ceded to the United States by South Carolina a couple decades before.
And Im pretty sure it was over a million people.
Have you got a source?
See what happened in the border states, namely Maryland? The Union violently killed Confederate sympathizers and placed the region under martial law.
Other than Union troops fighting back when attacked by a mob in Baltimore, the Union did not kill Confederate sympathizers in Maryland. The Confederacy hunted down and killed Union sympathizers in Tennessee and Texas. The areas near both capitals were placed under martial law.
That aside, this is getting out of hand, but the reason I find the CSA victory interesting is the fact that I wonder how bad the USA could have gotten in the case where it has a chip on its shoulder and a large enemy on its border, possibly two depending on if the Brits aid the South. In those conditions they become like Germany, enemies on all sides, and a chip on there shoulder for revenge.
An independent Confederacy gives the Union one moderate sized enemy on their border, two if Britain aids the CSA, possibly three if the French retain control of Mexico. It give the Confederacy one larger, more industrialized enemy on its border. If Confederate diplomacy maintains the same skill shown during the Civil War, they could easily add Mexico, France, Spain, and Britain to their list of their enemies. Revanchism is likely in the Union, and significantly more likely if another power helped the Confederacy obtain independence. Revanchism is certain in the Confederacy. They clearly considered all slaveholding states, a route for a transcontinental railroad, and the major mineral-producing US territories to be theirs by right, based on their unsuccessful attempts to seize these areas. Barring the Confederacy producing multiple generals better than Robert E Lee, they probably won't even keep all of the 11 states that seceded.
That and socialism might be more acceptable in some ways, and a CSA-USA reunion peacefully after some time apart has always been an interest to me.
Socialism came to power in less industrialized nations where the majority of the population were peasants, like Russia or China. The Confederacy is significantly more likely to go socialist than the Union. Peaceful reunion is virtually impossible - unreconstructed fanatics were still bombing churches a century after the Civil War in OTL. A reunion with minimal violence is possible. More industrialized Confederate states as well as the Transmississippi have some chance of breaking away from the Confederacy and then rejoining the Union to avoid becoming European client states. The core of the cotton belt might rejoin the Union if they collapse economically, but they are more likely to be forcibly annexed.
 
I cannot answer for any other posters but for myself my interest in a Confederate victory in the ACW is three fold.

1) I do not agree with your implication that a CSA victory is unlikely, nor is a Confederate victory necessary for Confederate independence. There are in fact a great many Confederate independence scenarios some are very unlikely to the point they stretch the reader's credibility (e.g. some of the various steam punk offerings) other such as a Union conflict with Britain or a major Union reversal before the 1864 Union elections are far from improbable. A war over Trent for example was more likely than not right up until St Stephen's day 1862. So my first reason for liking the Confederate independence scenario is that there are so many different credible PODs to explore and they can lead to a wide variety of different time-lines.
It is certainly possible to write credible CSA victory timelines, but most attempts are not particularly credible. Looking at your examples, a Union conflict with Britain is improbable without very uncharacteristic levels of diplomatic incompetence on both sides. A major Union reversal before the 1864 elections is possible, but the most probable result of that is the Confederacy falling a couple months later, not their achieving independence.
2) My second reason for liking the Confederate independence scenario is that it is a major change in history compared with OTL. The USA can never be the superpower that it is in OTL 20th Century (unless of course it re-unites with the CSA in someway very quickly).
The US still could become a superpower, but it is less likely and would take longer than in OTL.
In all probability it will break-up because it will have lost the major source of its prosperity (the south).
The Confederacy was the major source of US exports, but that was only about 5% of the US economy. The Union still had most of its previous agriculture and infrastructure, as well as virtually all of its previous industry, mineral wealth, and shipping. US breakup after spending that much blood and treasure trying to maintain the Union is about as likely as the US Revolutionaries voluntarily rejoining the British Empire.
The CSA on the other hand is likely to be very rich in many scenarios and dirt poor in a few.
The Confederacy ended the war with $2.7 billion in public debt, over half of which was redeemable at 8% interest 6 months after the end of the war. Ten percent of the Confederacy's draft age white men were serving in the Union Army, and others were in armed rebellion against the Confederacy. Fifteen to twenty percent of adult male slaves had also joined the Union army, and many others had run away. Major portions of the rest of their work force were dead or crippled, and few immigrants would replace them. The Confederate infrastructure was collapsing due to overuse and being forced to operate at a loss by the Confederate government. Runaway inflation had destroyed much of the Confederate economy. Confederate industry would face an influx of cheaper foreign goods once the Union blockade ends, and vastly less contracts from the post-war peace-time Confederate government.

That's a notably worse financial situation than in OTL. The collapse of the Confederacy insured they would never have to pay that massive public debt, that most of the former slaves and Unionists would stay as part of the work force, that southern industry received greater levels of protection, that they had a stronger and more stable currency, and that carpetbaggers would invest in restoring and improving southern infrastructure. Rather than rich, let alone very rich, the Confederacy will probably be poorer than OTL's postbellum south.

It is possible that the CSA might become a backwater reviled by nearly every other nation but this is unlikely because in most scenarios it will be very rich and everyone will want its goods. Thus it is more probable that the CSA will become a rapidly developing, rich, major nation that practices slavery.
Odds of the Confederacy becoming a rapidly developing or a rich or major nation are all low. Achieving any of those is going to require the Confederacy overcoming the handicaps of the slave economic system, poor infrastructure, active opposition to funding internal improvements, active support of tariff levels insufficient to sustain the central government, runaway inflation, massive public debt, massive losses in the work force, and cultural disdain of immigrants. Best case, the Confederacy might become a regional power whose wealth is mostly in the hands of a small upper class.
If that is the case then I can easily see 'scientific' slavery and the combination of the worse excesses of early 20th Century ultra-Capitalism and slavery leading to monsterous slave management programmes. The CSA may possibly roll back ideas about race and slavery to pre-Wilberforce values across large parts of the globe.
While the Confederacy would probably try to bring the "benefits" of slavery to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, their track record on seizing and holding hostile territory was one of unremitting and often catastrophic failure.
An independent CSA can give rise to some truely horrific dystopias than are worth exploring for the light they shed on our current societies.
The slaveholding culture of the Deep South was already developing into a dystopian culture before the Civil War - some free blacks were re-enslaved, the enslavement of poor whites was advocated, travel papers were required in many areas, assault was an acceptable method of dealing with political opposition. During the war, the Confederate government had an official policy of executing or enslaving some enemy POWs, tolerated if not encouraged violent oppression of dissenting views, and had an unofficial policy of enslaving some enemy civilians. The Confederate government voted money for saboteurs to burn down Union hotels while people slept, burn down Union theaters during performances, and attempts at germ warfare.
 
I rarely see a European poster who prefers the idea of American dissolution and yet also believes the resulting history of Europe in the 20th century would be for the worse.
European posters who see how American dissolution would make things worse for Europe certainly exist, but they tend to be drowned out by a vocal minority who think the change will wank their favorite European country. Those posters miss that European dominance ended because conflicts between European powers led to a crippling general European War. Reduced US power probably adds at least the Caribbean and perhaps all of Latin America to the regions where the Europeans will come into conflict, increasing the odds of a crippling Great War. Reduced US power also means they have little or no effect on the Great War, so it's probably going to be longer, more destructive, and less conclusive.
 
For African Americans, war commenced not in 1861, but in 1661, when the Virginia Colony began passing America’s first black codes, the charter documents of a slave society that rendered blacks a permanent servile class and whites a mass aristocracy. They were also a declaration of war.

Coates may be a better writer than you; he gets paid for it. That doesn't mean he's a better authority on history.

During a war, the people on the two sides fight each other whenever they meet. During the period of chattel slavery in the U.S., whites and blacks were intimately mixed, but actual violence between them was rare. Whites and blacks cooperated in building and operating the ante-bellum South. It was on terms dictated by whites and profoundly unjust to blacks, but the cooperation was real.

The acts of rebellion cited by Coates were sporadic and occasional - an annoyance to white slave owners, who found the ownership of slaves very profitable. If black rebellion - even passive resistance - had been universal or even prevalent, black enslavement would have been abandoned.

"Coercive racial oppression" is horrible; it is not, however, slavery. As has been said, in 1861, children and adults could be legally sold in much of the United States; in 1865, they could not.

There was no chattel slavery in apartheid South Africa. Was it less of a "war" than the ante-bellum South?
 
Well, I believe that the Caribbean sugar plantations for example were rather horrid places - in a different category perhaps than say the traditional African and Middle Eastern kind of slavery, but I must say that I don't know much about the subject. But I think there are rather authoritative studies, so one probably shouldn't rely on one's subjective opinions but to read a modern magnum opus or several about this question.
 
Why so many CSA Victory threads? My guess (in no particular order);

5) wrecking the USA to further one's own preferred postwar world order.

Usually involving either:
a) the preservation of one's favorite colonial empire
b) wanting their favorite country to win a war they lost in the previous 150 years for which they blame the USA, even it was only due to its or the UN's existence.
c) the preservation of one's favorite colonial empire
d) leaving the European powers to settle their own issues, and everyone else's, by themselves
e) the preservation of one's favorite colonial empire
f) keeping "America" as a slave/third world motley collection of Balkanized states makes them feel better about the history of their own country
g) the preservation of one's favorite colonial empire
h) a strictest belief that the USA has played no positive role against the various bad players of the last 150 years, only being the ultimate war profiteer
i) the preservation of one's favorite colonial power
j) the belief that the USA is a clumsy stupid giant that would do much better as a series of smaller countries that took their lead from their older, wiser, European betters.:p
k) the preservation of one's favorite colonial empire
l) did I mention the preservation of one's favorite colonial empire?:D

European posters who see how American dissolution would make things worse for Europe certainly exist, but they tend to be drowned out by a vocal minority who think the change will wank their favorite European country. Those posters miss that European dominance ended because conflicts between European powers led to a crippling general European War. Reduced US power probably adds at least the Caribbean and perhaps all of Latin America to the regions where the Europeans will come into conflict, increasing the odds of a crippling Great War. Reduced US power also means they have little or no effect on the Great War, so it's probably going to be longer, more destructive, and less conclusive.

Agreed with all, except that most people who cheer the concept of the dissolution of the Union tend to believe in there being no consequences. The idea that the Pax Britannica would solve all problems outside of the European continent tends to hand wave all the elements that led to World War One. Even as they hand wave WWI itself. Not to mention the number of people who like to judge American actions today while not considering the consequences of nothing being done at all.
 
BTW for those who argue that people don't actually like CSA victory threads check out "the Southerners were not fighting to preserve slavery arguments" being made here

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=328329

If you buy the false argument that Southerners were not fighting to preserve slavery then what's not to like about a Confederate victory :confused:

I second this recommendation. Read all the posts carefully, though, since the rather simplistic description JSmith provides handwaves away a lot of the detail.

Edit: incidentally, JSmoth, there are a couple of big problems with your post.

First, nobody is claiming that no Southerners were fighting for slavery.
Second, regardless of the individual motives for fighting (the majority of Southerners motivation, for instance, seems to have been that they were forced to; they were conscripted, after all), the fact remains that the abolition or preservation of slavery was the core issue. So there is something profoundly not to like about a CSA victory.
 
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