Some random thoughts on the American Civil War, North/South relations, and racial issues

[ghoststrider.livejournal.com]

So I ran across an interesting post over at Outside the Beltway about the Civil War, which had a very interesting comments section. I had a few thoughts about the Civil War myself, though knowing they were probably very controversial and likely to spark a lot of wank, I kept them to myself on my personal LJ.

Well, mahnmut and underlankers encouraged me to post it here, saying it was excellent (note: don't ever take them to a bar, they clearly drink too much) so I decided I will. Rest assured, what follows is probably very unorthodox and is likely to piss people off (especially if you're from the south.)

Also, if you're not from America, you can safely skip this. This is pretty much American wankery through and through.

With that out of the way, here goes nuthin...



The way I see it, the Civil War was unnecessary. Was it right? Probably not. If you read the comments, you'll notice an intelligent commentator who goes by the name "michael reynolds" point out that both sides were largely composed of suckers who got duped into fighting someone else's war. In the south, you had poor whites who were being abused by the slavery system (as black slaves, not being paid, essentially suppressed wages for poor non-slaveholding whites) go off to fight as troops; in the north, it was fresh off the boat immigrants. Both sides were racist, and both sides were being run by elites who just wanted more power vis-a-vis the other. In the south, it was slave owning aristocrats; in the north, it was industrialists who wanted to use force, rather than the market, to increase their profits and power.

Were there good guys on both sides? Absolutely. Were there other reasons? Absolutely. But let's be honest, here: the Civil War was about slavery. Yes, there were issues about state rights, federal taxation, and economic policy, and we could say that came to about 10-15% of the complaints with the Union, but those still eventually come back around to slavery.

Again, though, I don't think the war was necessary. The reason I hold this view is that the south's economy was really not in good shape. As one person noted, they were already 100 years behind the North and Europe and were continuing to fall behind. Yes, their cotton industry was huge, but it was not irreplaceable, and over time, other competitors would have sprung up to challenge them, further eroding their economic strength. You might even see the poor whites protest, riot, demonstrate, and even go into rebellion against the Confederacy (and then, of course, individual states' disagreements with the Confederate government might have blossomed into something else.)

Within forty to fifty years, I think the Confederacy in this scenario would have collapsed, or at least reabsorbed by the Union. It would have faced an economic collapse at one point or another, and I'm sure it would have faced political instability. Add to that the efforts of the Northern abolitionists to get out the slaves, and they were going to have problems. (BTW, I'm not arguing life would have peachy for the slaves, nor am I arguing that the Confederacy would have emancipated them before being reabsorbed. I just don't know.)

I think, in the long run, this might actually be better for racial relations, because the Confederacy would not have fallen because of abolitionist Northern troops, but by simple economics--and the economics of slavery, their own institution, at that. Would racism continue? Undoubtedly, but it would probably not be as intense as it was for almost 150 years after the end of the Civil War (that not being a point exactly 150 years after, but the entire period, with it fading and tapering off at the end.)

Of course, this is all with the benefit of hindsight, and I'm not sure, if I were in Lincoln's position, if I would have done anything differently with the information he possessed.

By extension, however, there is the question of Southern pride in the post I linked to. The question is, what is there to be proud about in the south? (Now here is where I get REALLY controversial.) Basically, most, if not all, of southern pride is somehow linked to the Confederacy. Confederate flags, Lee-Jackson Day, southern "gentility" (which comes from the slaveholding southern aristocracy's notions of etiquette), etc. etc. About the only thing that doesn't go back to the Confederacy, slavery, and perhaps racism in general is college football, which is the first religion in the south, ahead of Christianity. Which I can't begrudge them that, that is genuinely something to be proud of (especially since NCAA football is now almost solely the SEC League), but as I'm not a macho spots jock who thinks there are better things for schools to be doing, I'm not sure that's really something to be proud of either.

EDIT: Music. I suppose there is southern rock and bluegrass that the south can be proud of. Okay.

So this is a really controversial and probably going to have me shot statement, but what is there to be proud of in the South? And why did we fight the war, anyways? We should have let the south secede and watch it crumble before coming back to the Union, begging for readmittance. That would have been the only sane thing to do.

Just my two creds.

Comments

[weswilson]

So would you be willing to put yourself and your children into slavery for the chance that their children might have slightly better race relations? What kind of foresight must one have to think that 4 million people in chains in an acceptable cost for something so nebulous?

I'm also highly skeptical that economics is what would have brought down the South. We see how economics works when entire nations don't have to pay large portions of their citizens adequate paychecks, and that is more foreign trade.

But yes... almost all Southern pride stems from the Civil War.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Behold the Fallacy of the Efficacy of Evil. Evil is feared because it works, don't you know. Oh please. Outside of Haiti and the United States slavery was ended peacefully everywhere else. Why? Opportunity Cost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost). It's why the South lost the war. For an economic analysis of slavery and the Confederacy read Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War (http://www.amazon.com/Emancipating-Slaves-Enslaving-Free-Men/dp/0812693124/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326606232&sr=1-1). Very few actually wanted passionately to end slavery in the North. The abolitionists were essentially the libertarians of their day, despised as impractical dreamers, not merely by people in the South but in the North as well. Had the South merely paid the tarrifs, Lincoln and the Republicans would have been more than happy to "allow" them to keep "their" slaves. Some of the Northern industrialists just realized that owning people collectively, through a corporatist federal government was much more lucrative than allowing a smaller aristocracy to own people directly. The outcome was, in one important sense, a victory for liberty: no more chattel slavery, but it was paid for in blood, liberty and treasure at way too high a price. The U.S. exchanged one form of slavery, a very nasty, onerous one, for a more subtle, broad-ranging, less onerous (in the short term) and "egalitarian" one, as well as put their constitutional republic on steeper slippery slope to empire than it had been on previously. All of that for an institution which was going to be wiped out by its own economic unfitness in short order anyway. Liberty actually works, you see, but people have no faith in that, which is why they are desperate to believe that war was the only answer. To believe otherwise is to call their world view into question. In that world view, Great Men have to force the mass of humanity to be free. It cannot be the case that economics constantly makes Man an offer he cannot refuse, no matter how obstinantly he resists: liberty and respect for human rights enable a lowering of opportunity cost and a rising standard of living.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

So would you be willing to put yourself and your children into slavery for the chance that their children might have slightly better race relations?

The problem with time machine scenario questions is that they often ask questions which are way too narrow in scope to provide enligtening answers. What about all of the people who died in that war? Would you be willing to fight a war for your freedom if you didn't know what it was going to cost you beforehand?

Jefferson wrote in the U.S. Declaration of Independence: "...accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." One need only look at the state of the U.S. today, and people's willingness to tolerate it, to see Jefferson's observation validated.

The Southerners, despite the moral ugliness of some of their society's institutions, were, at the end of the day, fighting for their homes and families against invading armies. If that is not a reason for pride then the concept has no meaning at all.

[ghoststrider.livejournal.com]

I'm absolutely certain it is just that, and let them do their thing. Their idiocy will, eventually, burn itself out.

[3fgburner.livejournal.com]

I run into this at Jamestown, frequently. Particularly around Thanksgiving, I get asked if I'm a Pilgrim.

After the War, most textbook publishers were up in New York and New England. They re-wrote the history books to be more Yankee-centric. It's better now, but there's whole generations of people who think that European-American history starts in 1620.

It's fun watching the visitors' heads go all splody, when you tell 'em that the Pilgrims are those late-comers up at Plymouth, in Northern Virginia.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

By extension, however, there is the question of Southern pride in the post I linked to. The question is, what is there to be proud about in the south? (Now here is where I get REALLY controversial.) Basically, most, if not all, of southern pride is somehow linked to the Confederacy. Confederate flags, Lee-Jackson Day, southern "gentility" (which comes from the slaveholding southern aristocracy's notions of etiquette), etc. etc.

Well, as a Virginian, my "Southern" pride has never been based on any of those things really. I mean a lot of folks make it a "us versus them" thing, but I don't get that. If it wasn't for Southern culture (and I mean all of it including African American, Creole, Cajun, Native American), we'd all still be swinging and swaying to Sammy Kaye (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHIK54zVovY) (as Little Richard (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFL047fmsgg) said many years ago), there certainly wouldn't be any rock-n-roll. Never mind the influence of Jazz, and Blues or Ragtime, or Southern food (it definitely sounds like you definitely haven't had any soul food). People may not do the "A gracious good evening to you fine sir" like in movies, but as a transplant to New York, I certainly miss the genuine friendless you see in the South. It took me about a year to stop saying hi to strangers in NYC before I got the message, they thought I wanted money or something.

And I got to say there certainly are a lot of stereotypes in NYC about the Southern United States. But the crazy thing is that the area where my brother lives outside of Raleigh North Carolina, it's entirely ex-New Yorkers (with refugees from New Jersey) that got feed up with the never ending grind, the high cost of living, etc. And they love living there. Great schools in the South (compare UNC or NC State out of state to NYU instate for tuition-- in fact it's mostly people from New England going to school in the South), great collegiate basketball. Beautiful beaches, and some of the best seafood. And lawd have merci, I'd give anything for some North Carolina styled BBQ right bout now. Growing up, there were a lot of things I took pride in as Virginian, and most of it had nothing to do with the Confederacy. Berkley Plantation had the first Thanksgiving years before those uptight weenies the Puritans did up in Massachusetts Bay colony too. Victory against the British in the Revolutionary War happened right in Virginia. Boston and Philadelphia and New York? Oh yeah. They were busy serving tea to their British overlords and puckering up their lips thinking of how many ways they could say "God Save the King!" I grew up near the Yorktown battlefields (http://www.nps.gov/yonb/index.htm), Colonial Williamsburg, (http://www.history.org/) and its House of Burgesses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Burgesses)(one of the first representative bodies in the colonies), where Virginia passed the first laws for religious freedom in the colonies (Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom) years before the Bill of Rights. Although, as a kid, I was tortured into going on field trips to Fort Monroe, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Monroe) to see the cell where Jefferson Davis was imprisoned for two years by the Union forces after the Civil War.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

And please know some of this was in jest, y'all.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Good schools in the South? Did Mississippi teleport to the west coast and I didn't hear about it?

[ghoststrider.livejournal.com]

I full admitted that I was going to offend people, which is why I hesitated to post it. But you do bring up good points. The music I already noted; that is something you genuninely have. I'm not so sure about food--in this day and age, food is becoming less regionalized. You are, though, quite correct about urban assholes in the north--these people are sincere jerks. And don't get me started about the parents I see everyday--whoo fucking boy, do they have issues.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

In terms of historical scale, it was absolutely necessary. You say The Confederacy probably would've collapsed within 40 to 50 years or get reabsorbed into The Union? Not likely. The weakened US would slow its progress to a crawl, and 50 years of development would go down the drain and put the country permanently behind Europe et all. The US as we know it would become a Banana Republic or worse, get invaded by a bigger power, or even Mexico (who would undoubtedly have an easier time taking the entire West Coast).

It's optimistic to say things could've resolved themselves, but let's be real here. There have been very few splits in history that didn't just ruin one or both halves of the country. North Korea is a hellhole, East Germany was in shambles, and there's no reason to assume that dividing your own goddamn economy and destroying the types of relations that people rely on would ever lead to a positive outcome.

The Civil War was necessary for so many reasons it gives me a headache.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'You say The Confederacy probably would've collapsed within 40 to 50 years or get reabsorbed into The Union? Not likely. The weakened US would slow its progress to a crawl, and 50 years of development would go down the drain and put the country permanently behind Europe et all.'

The Civil War is what weakened the US. War is never good for those engaged in it unless the losers have enough wealth to offset the cost to the winners. The South didn't.

'North Korea is a hellhole, East Germany was in shambles, and there's no reason to assume that dividing your own goddamn economy and destroying the types of relations that people rely on would ever lead to a positive outcome.'

How was South Korea and West Germany? Should West Germany have fought East Germany to force reunification?

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Historians are romantics with delusions. Economics paints a far different picture of the viability of slavery than most people want to admit.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

...there's no reason to assume that dividing your own goddamn economy and destroying the types of relations that people rely on would ever lead to a positive outcome.

Oh please, as if it were "everyman's" economy. Collectivist fantasy identifications. The North was robbing the South through "managed trade" mercantilism in order to have corporate welfare. After the war gave the Northern army a new, updated experience in the wonderfully old and barbaric practices of "total war," they turned their wonderful humanitarian benevolence on the indigengous peoples in what was damned near a genocidal war. The Northern Morality Play is a farce of collectivst identity myth-making and ancestor worship.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Nonsense, without the CSA the USA would have industrialized far faster and more seamlessly and wound up with a political spectrum resembling the rest of Europe. Given how US identity tends to reflect sharply on the Other it might well adopt race-neutral policies just to spite the CSA and to poke sharply at the growing basketcase the CSA would have become. The CSA, however, as you said would have ultimately fallen apart into anarchy after having been a dictatorship in a last-ditch chance to save itself. The surviving part of the USA would actually be economically much more capitalist than IOTL.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

I don't believe the civil war affected racism one way or the other.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

On a high level it definitely did. Simply black people were no longer property to be bought and sold. That's a fairly big change. We weren't there before so we can't directly experience how big a chance, but I imagine that also was a drastic change. After that they were just an inferior species.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

All those Southerners who faced starvation, disease, poverty, and a whole host of issues from losing the war had to blame someone. Who do you think they blamed?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually it did: it collapsed the four part slave-free black-poor white-rich white (in ascending order of rights) class order into a black-white racial order, while shifting racism to make it in several ways more virulent as with slavery and slaveowners removed Northern whites' concern about racism in the South was subject to the Law of Diminishing Returns until TV showed people what happened every day and every week of every year of the Old South.....

[kayjayuu.livejournal.com]

College football and music are the only two things you could come up with for the South to be proud of?

Wow. Segregated much, no pun intended?

Tell me, what does the North have to be proud of? Can't say football or music, those are taken.

ETA: And tell me please, kind sir, what source of Southern pride sprang forth prior to the Civil War? Say, for Vahginians like Richard Lee, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Basketball was invented in Massachusetes. A lot of northern states banned slavery decades before the federal government did. People from the north can drive on ice and don't freak out over two inches of snow.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

OK, but why the ? What are you hiding, Sir?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The Civil War was bloody all out of proportion to the issue that actually began the shooting. Abolition in practice was nothing but a weapon of war, the complete failure of Reconstruction due to the savage terrorism of Redemption showed that for 99% of white Northerners it was embraced solely to collapse the Confederacy, no more and no less, and what happened to the slaves afterward was irrelevant. The actual war as it unfolded was a pattern of hideous bloodbaths (the true horror of it can simply be seen in that the war's casualties are rated on the KIAs alone and that the war still, 150 years later, has not been topped in all subsequent US wars put together), and the clinging desperately to abolition as justifying it always stops in 1865, for in 1866-76 it becomes clear that the war was like all other wars in history: vicious, savage, squalid, its glory all moonshine and gained over mangled and ruined bodies, with the historians salvaging the 13th Amendment as its major gain to ignore the failure of the decade following it and the evil thuggishness of the century following. No civil wars are ever necessary. The North was never going to abolish slavery altogether, it was going to limit its spread into the territories. The leaders of the so-called Confederate States of America went immediately to the military option and gambled very badly as the subsequent war proved to be really a one-man show, the Ulysses S. Grant and his Amazing Friends shows. With that a war ensued that was two wars: Union Army v. Confederate Army, Confederacy v. Unionists. Each fed on and strengthened the others, a war of bloodbath pitched battles, where most generals on both sides were frankly put incompetent and not suited to command platoons but led armies, and both sides used indiscriminate terror through the war. The Emancipation hailed by later generations was brought about primarily by slaves themselves and half-heartedly and rather dickishly by the Lincoln Administration, attempted to be strangled in its cradle by Andrew Johnson, and heroically strengthened by Grant at a price of burying his posthumous reputation now and forever.

An independent CSA would be a pariah state where its only all-classes all-states institution is none other than the CS Army, committed to cubing a circle as its very ideological basis, and the internal contradictions would invariably lead to it becoming unglued. A USA looking at such a basketcase and the wider world looking at it may well be the PRC WRT the DPRK or SA WRT Zimbabwe and simply avoid handling its collapse as long as humanly possible until no other option presents itself. The true horror of the war that happened historically is that there are no good options once the shooting starts, only bad, worse, and catastrophic.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Oh, and as far as the Confederacy's "generalship" I rest my case that the US Civil War historically was a one-man show and that everywhere U.S. Grant opened a can of whoop-ass his CS enemies surrendered and Grant did not. Grant took the usual laws and maxims of war and put them through the meat grinder. There are repeated instances where military logic would dictate he would be the loser (Shiloh, Chattanooga, the move over the James) and where he instead proved to be the big winner and ultimate all-around best general of the war. So long as it only took one general to make the CSA fall apart at the seams militarily whatever superiorities of leadership the CSA had were worthless.

And frankly, too, the CSA's military leadership as seen in the Army of Northern Virginia....Lee was addicted to the kind of headlong attack and disregard for firepower that gave John Bell Hood the reputation for General Failure he so deserves. Jackson's strategic reputation is deserved as he croaked before his attempts to Admiral Yamamoto the North would have been put into effect (and it would have resulted in a Rally Round the Flag effect and a war of annihilation, not the Yankees surrendering, just as the actions of the Axis in regard to blatant disregard of the laws of war led the USA to pulverize their cities with conventional and atomic bombings). Longstreet's the best tactician of the war but at the same time he, too, had his moments, plural.

And of the CS Western generals the only one who remotely qualifies for good is Braxton Bragg and this on grounds of his controlling the paces of the battles he lost and fighting the only clash of the two sides' regular armies where the CSA actually routed a US Army. The rest of them frankly ain't worth jack and shit and jack left town.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

We should have let the south secede and watch it crumble before coming back to the Union, begging for readmittance.

The bigger issue was the idea of whether we were going to have a loose amalgam of independent countries under a common trade and defense agreement, or a single nation. To paraphrase Lincoln, he would do whatever was necessary to preserve the latter. The US at the time was a weak third-world nation with a pitiful military and little money to do anything significant. Had he let the south secede, other states may have followed and likely there would not have been a Union for the south to be readmitted to.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Nah, if the South secedes secession would have been outlawed in the decade immediately after the war and the North, already the richest part of the USA, would have developed more on the lines of Europe, without the South's particular contributions to the USA's unique political spectrum.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

The South may have collapsed without a war, but if no war = no blockades, it probably would have taken a while longer.

You're right that it would have collpased and eventually rejoined, but maybe Grover would be getting the credit insead of Abraham.

Southern Pride might be a little exaggerated, in movies and TV. There aren't Confederate flags in every yard. There's no resentment of the North (obvious, at least). We don't gasp and stare when coloreds walk into a restaurant. Lookie here, I even have electricity!