The CSA was a bid to form an independent nation out of a region that had a common enemy and some collective regional identity. But the CSA comprised many sub-cultures (a few of them didn't want to be there), and it had a leadership that sometimes confused self-interest with public policy. It had its fair share of charlatans and profiteers and criminal opportunists. It had some brilliant generals and a great many men in uniform who would be the pride of any army in human history. It was committed to 18th century republican values that were incompatible with fighting a modern war, and it had internal social conflicts that the war aggravated.
In nearly all of this it was entirely like the American Revolutionaries. The colonists in 1776: one-third for independence, one-third against, one-third uncommitted. That must be the standard for legitimacy, or else our United States lacks it. The CSA fought a much larger enemy than George III, mostly on its own soil, without a Dutch loan or a French fleet to aid it, and the majority, in spite of internal divisions, put up a herculean effort, won spectacular victories, made shift with what little it had, and held out till the place was literally gutted and blood-drained by its foe.
The four-year history of the CSA is not necessarily the place to seek an example of the values Southerners sought to uphold. Any nation fighting for survival from the cradle, invaded and blockaded all its life, doesn't get a chance to express the finer points of democracy and civil culture. If all we knew of Americans was how they actually behaved from 1776 to 1783, we wouldn't think much of our sense of "democracy" or commitment to "personal freedom."
~ Douglas Harper
5 comments:
I live in richmond va.and still see many, many,remnants from the devistation caused by the civil war. funny, the capital of the confederacy who was and still is seen as the capital of bigotry, actually put the first elected black in the highest ever office in u.s. history, the governor,up til obhoma, none had acheived such a position in a state with an 82% white populace.this set THE presadent for others including president of the U.S.A. it only took the rest of the nation 135 years or more for the liberal north to heed its own advice to the old south,a century earlier, and finally the souths example and elected a black in high office of gov. this only occured after the old south became the self-critical-new south,and allowed the correct thing to live out thru election ballet, did the rest of the nation follow virginias lead and then became un-hipocritical...now everbody is finally is like virginia race wise...un-prejudiduced.
Let us not forget that the primary "value" the Confederacy sought to uphold was the power to enslave human beings.
I support secession, and the North should have seceded, as some abolitionists advocated.
@ Mobicile
The Civil War was dreadful, but when Tocqueville wrote about America 25 years before the war, he noted that the free people living in Northern states were notably more ambitious than those in the South. Slavery was an especially pernicious form of socialism that had already done immeasurable harm before Fort Sumter.
Mr. Martin, I disagree that the primary "value" the Confederacy sought to uphold was the power to enslave human beings.
A comment thread on my writer's blog is not the place to go into it, but I have very good reason for so thinking.
The firing on Ft. Sumter had nothing to do with ending slavery. The states of the Deep South seceded because of slavery and other things, but slavery was not why either side started fighting.
I agree with Connie. The threat of loss of Taxes on Southern exports would have led to economic hardship to northern industry, which had become so dependent on federal subsidies. The South was paying 80 percent of the federal taxes with 10 percent of the population. The north didnt fight to free slaves. The sought attacked the South on slavery only because it would lead to them being out voted if Cotton (exporting) States entered the union and lead to the northern states having a less than majority vote, leading to a revision of the heavy tariffs. That was what cause them to wage war on the South to keep us in the union.
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