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The Civil War: ‘A conspiracy of amnesia’

I feel like you should be able to track your relatives back to the days of the Civil War before you can comment.

Know a bunch of yankees who's grandparents came over on a boat in the early 1900s that love to comment on the Civil War. They need to STFU.

I understand what the guy is getting at in the article, but we need to be very careful about sweeping history under the rug, especially in the South. Many people who have agendas like to knock down buildings and cover up Southern history rather than have it prominently displayed. I'm of the opinion that everything should be shown.

Jeez, the slave quarters at Monticello weren't even featured or rebuilt until very recently. Put everything on display. We have to preserve everything, rather than destroy and forget about things.
 
Slavery was the cornerstone of southern buinsess. That was the "states right" at heart of the war.

By the way my family came over in the 1830s not 1900s.
 
I have my great-great-grandfather's bayonet from the war. My grandfather gave it to me last year a couple of months before he passed away. It's one of my most treasured possessions, along with his own sword that was his from World War II.
 
Go said:
I feel like you should be able to track your relatives back to the days of the Civil War before you can comment.

Know a bunch of yankees who's grandparents came over on a boat in the early 1900s that love to comment on the Civil War. They need to STFU.
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Ahh yes, because objective, thorough analysis can only occur from people with direct links to the hot button issue in question.

Neg rep for this silliness.
 
GO isn't the same Gobraves, etc from the other board is he?

This Go is acting complately differently.
 
Yeah, it's him.

I will say it's probably very difficult to be a descendant from a group on the wrong side of history. The combination of pride in your roots plus getting crapped on by everyone plus the shame of being, at the very least, descendant from losers must be kind of difficult.

Doesn't make it right to be an apologist, but I can understand how someone like Go could turn out the way he did.
 
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ConnorEl said:
per Leonard Pitts Jr.



Anyhow, today marks the 150th anniversary of first conflict of the Civil War.

I don' t pretend to be especially knowledgeable wrt the history of the war. But my impression is that Pitts is mostly right to suggest that the war was more about slavery than some seem willing to admit.

I don't know that any of my ancestors ever owned slaves, but I do consider the African slave trade to be one of the worst chapters in our nation's history. So glad it came to an end...and sorry it took such a bloody conflict to end it.

And so glad Lincoln was around to lead our nation through it.
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There was a great piece in this week's TIME magazine about the Civil War. I'd encourage you to read it. The war was clearly, at its core, about slavery (or, more specifically, the potential spread of slavery). The Civil War began in Kansas in the mid-1850's, not at Fort Sumter in 1865.
 
DeacinBama said:
It's been years since I've studied this stuff, but IIRC the North - Lincoln in particular - was content to let the South keep their slaves. He just didn't want slavery to proliferate to any of the western states, regardless of latitude. I seem to remember learning that the South mistakenly feared otherwise, but I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
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The North, who benefitted from the tariff system, did not want slavery in new territories or states not because of any moral reasons but because it would have added those reps and senators to the southern voting block. The South had what we would view today as a Third World economy where they shipped out raw materials and imported finished goods, creating a trade deficit. Federal tariffs protected Northern manufactured goods so the consumers in the South had to pay what they viewed as inflated prices on such items as clothing.

Slavery played multiple roles in the conflict as it was an economic and in a small degree, a moral one. Big myth that the North fought primarily to "free the slaves".
 
Go said:
I feel like you should be able to track your relatives back to the days of the Civil War before you can comment.

Know a bunch of yankees who's grandparents came over on a boat in the early 1900s that love to comment on the Civil War. They need to STFU.

I understand what the guy is getting at in the article, but we need to be very careful about sweeping history under the rug, especially in the South. Many people who have agendas like to knock down buildings and cover up Southern history rather than have it prominently displayed. I'm of the opinion that everything should be shown.

Jeez, the slave quarters at Monticello weren't even featured or rebuilt until very recently. Put everything on display. We have to preserve everything, rather than destroy and forget about things.
Click to expand...

I have relatives who both fought and owned slaves. I may have had relatives who fought for the North but I haven't been able to trace back that far.
 
It's good thing people can comment of college football or basketball without having played it. What the hell would we talk about?
 
Rethinking the issue today while writing a paper for my Soutehrn history class, I feel that to say the war was about slavery is too simplified. As stated earlier, the North didn't care about the moral implications.

It was the politics and economics of slavery that led to the war.

How ever you view the war, this kind of debate is good. The more people learn about the true causes of the war, the sooner we can really put the conflict in the past and the South can hopefully get over it. Lots of misinformation out there associated with the war.
 
I had lots of family fight in the Civil War on both sides. The ones that fought for the Union were from the South as well but were against secession and joined some of the Union Cavalry regiments formed in Tennessee and one of the few mounted infantry Union regiments raised in North Carolina.

My family in the Confederate Army fought at Gettysburg, Antietam, 2nd Bull Run, the Seven Days, the Wilderness, Chickamauga and Stone's River to name a few of the more well known battles they were in. Stone's River took the largest toll on my family. Had one great great great grandfather captured there and at least three other great uncles killed there. One of those great uncles was awarded whatever the southern version of the medal of honor was there.

Had another great grandfather killed by the Confederate home guard in the mountains of Western North Carolina because that side of the family was heavily Unionist. The commander of the Home Guard unit that killed him was my great grandfather from the other side. Looking at the records it seems his men did the killing without orders and without him present. Didn't stop my cousins and a group of Union partisans from gunning that great grandfather down on his front door step in April 1865.

Basically, I find it annoying that some people equate the South to Nazi Germany so I understand what Go is saying there. But anyone I hear that seriously wants the South to secede and "rise again" needs to have the crap kicked out of them. That was a horrible bloody mess that didn't have to happen and anyone who had family live through the thick of it should never want to see again.
 
Go said:
I feel like you should be able to track your relatives back to the days of the Civil War before you can comment.

Know a bunch of yankees who's grandparents came over on a boat in the early 1900s that love to comment on the Civil War. They need to STFU.
I understand what the guy is getting at in the article, but we need to be very careful about sweeping history under the rug, especially in the South. Many people who have agendas like to knock down buildings and cover up Southern history rather than have it prominently displayed. I'm of the opinion that everything should be shown.

Jeez, the slave quarters at Monticello weren't even featured or rebuilt until very recently. Put everything on display. We have to preserve everything, rather than destroy and forget about things.
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Yes. Love this logic. Make sure that if you have never played college basketball or coached college basketball, or had relatives who did, you need to STFU about college basketball.
 
The war was all about slavery in the South. Legally, they had the right to leave. Morally, there is no defense to salvery and that it why the chose to do so.

In the North, they profitted and didn't give a rats ***. They made lots of coin from cheap cotton and the mayor of New York even talked of making an independent city state to stay on terms with both sides. Hell, Linclon's great Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the Southern states.

Attitudes toward blacks were almost overwhelmingly abohorrent until WWII, and even then were mostly egregious.

It's been a long journey on an even longer road.
 
mfdeacs99 said:
Attitudes toward blacks were almost overwhelmingly abohorrent until WWII, and even then were mostly egregious.
.
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Try the 1970's. Racial tension and violence was present from the end of the Civil War until the 1970's. Only then did things start to calm down. It is pretty amazing reading different sources from the last century that America did not erupt into an all-out race war.

On the note of racial tension, I just finished reading Blood Done Sign My Name by Tim Tyson. Its a true story and takes place in Oxford, NC. There are some incredible things in it that are unbelievable for someone young like me who didn't grow up with all the violence.
 
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