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Did the Confederacy actually win the United States Civil War?

#1

Charlie Don't Surf

Charlie Don't Surf

http://weeklysift.com/2014/08/11/not-a-tea-party-a-confederate-party/

My favorite piece which is refuting the "but Democrats do it tooooo" argument:

This is not a universal, both-sides-do-it phenomenon. Compare, for example, the responses to the elections of our last two presidents. Like many liberals, I will go to my grave believing that if every person who went to the polls in 2000 had succeeded in casting the vote s/he intended, George W. Bush would never have been president. I supported Gore in taking his case to the Supreme Court. And, like Gore, once the Court ruled in Bush’s favor — incorrectly, in my opinion — I dropped the issue.
For liberals, the Supreme Court was the end of the line. Any further effort to replace Bush would have been even less legitimate than his victory. Subsequently, Democrats rallied around President Bush after 9/11, and I don’t recall anyone suggesting that military officers refuse his orders on the grounds that he was not a legitimate president.
Barack Obama, by contrast, won a huge landslide in 2008, getting more votes than any president in history. And yet, his legitimacy has been questioned ever since. The Birther movement was created out of whole cloth, there never having been any reason to doubt the circumstances of Obama’s birth. Outrageous conspiracy theories of voter fraud — millions and millions of votes worth — have been entertained on no basis whatsoever. Immediately after Obama took office, the Oath Keeper movement prepared itself to refuse his orders.
A black president calling for change, who owes most of his margin to black voters — he himself is a violation of the established order. His legitimacy cannot be conceded.
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#2

PatrThom

PatrThom

ERROR: Thread title does not contain "satisfy" nor "lust."

--Patrick


#3

Charlie Don't Surf

Charlie Don't Surf

I actually thought about it, and something about Johnny Reb never satisfying his lust for racism, but decided to pull up


#4

GasBandit

GasBandit

Did the Confederacy actually win the United States Civil War?
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Ooh! I got this one.

No.

Man, I'm just on fire today!


#5

Covar

Covar

Daniels-Advice-6.gif


#6

Charlie Don't Surf

Charlie Don't Surf

You could also read the article to see the author's case!


#7

GasBandit

GasBandit

I did. It's bunk.


#8

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

It's more like the Confederacy never died, not that it won. It's still effectively neutered in the parts of the country that people actually give a fuck about (major cities and their surrounding counties) though.


#9

PatrThom

PatrThom

AshburnerX said:
It's more like the Confederacy never died, not that it won. It's still effectively neutered in the parts of the country that people actually give a fuck about (major cities and their surrounding counties) though.
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Right. It sounds more like he's making the case that the Confederacy was merely suppressed, and never actually eliminated. But that would be true of pretty much any political ideology, ever.

--Patrick


#10

Eriol

Eriol

AshburnerX said:
It's more like the Confederacy never died, not that it won. It's still effectively neutered in the parts of the country that people actually give a fuck about (major cities and their surrounding counties) though.
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That's a dangerous belief IMO. You basically just said, outside of big cities and their immediate areas, you don't give a fuck about them either. Yes that's the minority of your population, but it's also the majority of your land area. And it's basically playing right into the feelings of alienation that feed the sentiment in the first place.

At least that's how I read your statement from an outsider's perspective.


#11

Covar

Covar

Eriol said:
That's a dangerous belief IMO. You basically just said, outside of big cities and their immediate areas, you don't give a fuck about them either. Yes that's the minority of your population, but it's also the majority of your land area. And it's basically playing right into the feelings of alienation that feed the sentiment in the first place.

At least that's how I read your statement from an outsider's perspective.
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Silly Eriol, it's okay to have disdain for those outside of cities, they're all a bunch of uneducated racists hicks.


#12

GasBandit

GasBandit

New York and California call us "Flyover country," as in, it's the part of the country that's not for anything other than flying over to get to the "real" America in New York and Los Angeles.

We call them America's Parentheses.


#13

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

GasBandit said:
New York and California call us "Flyover country," as in, it's the part of the country that's not for anything other than flying over to get to the "real" America in New York and Los Angeles.
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Texas hasn't been fly over territory for a long time and Ohio has only stopped being flyover territory by attracting huge corporations to Columbus by virtue of being one of the most diverse areas in America... something apparently no one knew until they could calculate the demographics. It really is just a case of finding a reason to go somewhere and then suddenly the entire town explodes into a hotspot. Personally, I couldn't be happier with Columbus turning into a more blue town like New York and Los Angeles... at least now I actually have things to DO on a Friday nite other than see a movie or get drunk at a bar.


#14

GasBandit

GasBandit

They still call us Flyover Country. Even though Chicago has always been in it.


#15

sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

So I guess this means that the war was only fought to keep all the states in the union.


#16

Charlie Don't Surf

Charlie Don't Surf

sixpackshaker said:
So I guess this means that the war was only fought to keep all the states in the union.
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well, it also eliminated outright, official slavery


#17

GasBandit

GasBandit

Charlie Don't Surf said:
well, it also eliminated outright, official slavery
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That wasn't the purpose of the war, however. The emancipation proclamation wasn't issued until 1863, almost 2 years after the start of the war.
Oddly enough, the proclamation also only applied to the states in official rebellion - the ~500,000 slaves in Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, and the states that were already de-facto retaken were later freed by separate arrangement via legislation. In fact, some ridicule the EP for its specific nature in freeing the slaves only in places over which the Union had no control.

Be that as it may, the civil war's pretext may have been about slavery, but at its core it was about the federal government's supremacy.


#18

Covar

Covar

Charlie Don't Surf said:
well, it also eliminated outright, official slavery
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and crushed states rights, and setup an American identity over a State Identity (Virginians et. al became Americans).


#19

Necronic

Necronic

Sam and Dean taught me to never underestimate the rural Midwest, as that will be where the final battle for heaven and hell will take place.

Also, fwiw the only reason that republicans are (on average) so racist, which...I'm sorry, but they are, is because all of the racist democrats switched sides after the Civil Rights movement. The real party of racism was 60s era southern democrats. Basically the south is just racist and whichever party they align with is racist. Which right now is republican.[DOUBLEPOST=1408138028,1408137973][/DOUBLEPOST]
GasBandit said:
Be that as it may, the civil war's pretext may have been about slavery, but at its core it was about the federal government's supremacy.
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That's like saying that rape isn't about sex.

ed: What I mean is that it's about both and trying to disentangle them is a disingenuous ploy weakly trying to hide a fact of history.


#20

Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Necronic said:
That's like saying that rape isn't about sex.
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Um ... rape isn't about sex. It's about power.

Your analogy actually aligns with what Gas said.


#21

GasBandit

GasBandit

Necronic said:
That's like saying that rape isn't about sex.

ed: What I mean is that it's about both and trying to disentangle them is a disingenuous ploy weakly trying to hide a fact of history.
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No, it isn't, and no, it isn't.

As Zero Esc points out, it's well documented psychology that rape is about power and domination, sex is just the vehicle.

The fact that the north actually didn't declare any slaves "free" (and even then, at first, only the slaves from the CSA, so that they could hopefully run away and join the Union army) until 2 years into the war shows that the north may have disapproved of slavery and been slowly moving to ensure its abolition, but it wasn't enough to precipitate war until the southern states directly and forcefully denied federal authority over them.

If the war's primary motivation had really been about slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation would have been issued in 1861, and would have included all states - not just the confederacy.


#22

Necronic

Necronic

Im going to go ahead and spoiler the rape analogy conversation jus in case anyone doesn't want to read it or finds it triggering, or simply non-Germaine
I'm not saying that rape isn't about power, it absolutely is, but it's also very much about sex. If it wasn't then there would be far more hetero male on male rape, which, if reporting is to be believed, is not the case. I'm not down playing the power side of the dynamic, but that power dynamic is in many ways intrinsically tied to gender and sexuality, which is my point in comparing it.

So, to talk about that in Civil War terms, I'm saying that while federal vs state power was a major part of it, it simply would not have gone to the level of war if not for the divergent views on the specific issue of slavery. It's not the first or last time states have butted heads on issues with the federal government, but this issue was the one that went to war. So while it absolutely was a matter of state vs federal, it was also absolutely about slavery.


#23

GasBandit

GasBandit

That doesn't address any of what I said. The union didn't free its own slaves at first, it only declared the southern slaves in the states that it specifically didn't have control of free. That shows what they really were concerned about - it wasn't a war to stop slavery, it was a war to stop secession. It could even be argued that if it was about slavery, the union would have been content to simply ban slavery within its own borders and enact a trade embargo on the south. But, of course, they couldn't do that because they needed the agricultural products to supply food and raw materials to the industrialized/urbanized north.


#24

Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

EDIT: Never mind, it doesn't matter.


#25

Krisken

Krisken

Zero Esc said:
EDIT: Never mind, it doesn't matter.
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YES! Now you get it!


#26

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Necronic said:
Im going to go ahead and spoiler the rape analogy conversation jus in case anyone doesn't want to read it or finds it triggering, or simply non-Germaine
I'm not saying that rape isn't about power, it absolutely is, but it's also very much about sex. If it wasn't then there would be far more hetero male on male rape, which, if reporting is to be believed, is not the case. I'm not down playing the power side of the dynamic, but that power dynamic is in many ways intrinsically tied to gender and sexuality, which is my point in comparing it.
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Hetero male on male rape is a common occurrence in any jail for men. In fact, if a man IS going to be raped by another man, it's something like a 9/10 chance that it's going to happen in a jail. It's just vastly under reported because admitting to the rampant sexual abuse in prisons would force us to do something about it and the right wing seems to think that being raped in prison is supposed to be PART of the prison experience.


#27

Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

That was my deleted post's message, although mine lacked numbers or proper sentences.


#28

Covar

Covar

Just like slavery and the Civil War! :awesome:


#29

jwhouk

jwhouk

The Civil War started out as states rights, specifically the right to secede over laws that were against what states wanted. It became a battle over slavery, because that was the primary reason for the secession of Southern states.

The "it wasn't about slavery" argument was a tautology of the first degree: Southern states did not want a federal law prohibiting slavery, and therefore chose to secede from the union - but the Federal government didn't have the stomach to do anything about slavery until states started to secede.

---
"Don't go there. Great-great-grandson of a GAR veteran..."


#30

GasBandit

GasBandit



#31

Necronic

Necronic

I now realize that, while it may have been clever, it was also a very stupid analogy since it's an even more contentious/sensitive statement.

My bad.


#32

Bubble181

Bubble181

I think you can't claim rape isn't about sex when there are plenty of countries in the world where (chemical) neutering is (part of/an option in) the punishment. Whether it's more about power, sex, or some other issues is another matter aand can partially differ from case to case. Saying all rape has the same guiding reasons is like saying all murder or all highway speeding has the same underlying issues and themes.


#33

Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Outside of this discussion--a country's method of dealing with a problem doesn't mean they know what they're talking about. Look at almost anything the U.S. does on a national/global scale. "You can't say there aren't weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when several countries invaded there searching for them."

A country's actions do not dictate reality, so it's poor reasoning for saying something is true. "50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong!" Yes, they can.


#34

Necronic

Necronic

Don't you dare being Elvis into this.


#35

Tress

Tress

It's not that the Confederacy won. Rather, it's the fact that losing the Civil War did not end racism or oppression, only direct slavery. Also, it shows that history is not always written by the winners. The South did an excellent job of spreading their bullshit version of the truth after the war, and they did it so well that some of their bullshit is still repeated by some folks today.


#36

Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

I feel like there are people still pissed that they can't enslave other people.


#37

PatrThom

PatrThom

Zero Esc said:
I feel like there are people still pissed that they can't enslave other people.
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Well yeah, oppression is an amazing way to increase productivity.

--Patrick


#38

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

PatrThom said:
Well yeah, oppression is an amazing way to increase productivity.

--Patrick
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Not to mention that it's real easy to feel good about your lot in life when you can literally see people n chains walking down the street.


#39

Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

AshburnerX said:
Not to mention that it's real easy to feel good about your lot in life when you can literally see people n chains walking down the street.
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We still have that, at least in the south. They're called chain gangs.


#40

Krisken

Krisken

Ravenpoe said:
We still have that, at least in the south. They're called chain gangs.
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Your land is a strange land I will never comprehend.


#41

Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Ravenpoe said:
We still have that, at least in the south. They're called chain gangs.
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Whoa, whoa, wait, I thought they stopped doing that by World War II?


#42

PatrThom

PatrThom

Zero Esc said:
Whoa, whoa, wait, I thought they stopped doing that by World War II?
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Hah! Hardly.
images.duckduckgo.jpg


Prisoners make cheap labor, what with being otherwise unemployable once they're convicted of anything.
"Orange is the new Black," indeed.

--Patrick


#43

Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Guess that answers the thread question with a yes.


#44

Charlie Don't Surf

Charlie Don't Surf

Part one: incarcerate as many black men as possible (we're doing a great job at this, especially if you look at crack vs cocaine drug laws!)
Part two: before-mentioned chain gangs
Part three: *dixie playing forever, profit*


#45

Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

I'm scared that this is the country my little cousins are growing up into.


#46

GasBandit

GasBandit



#47

Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

GasBandit said:
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The pixel quality there makes it look like he's unshaven, like he's been tapping that pencil for days.

If you're reacting to what Charlie said: there had been laws put into effect that specifically targeted black people post-emancipation. And in the eternally-shitheaded war on drugs, there is skewing toward arresting non-whites despite the volume of white drug-users. It's easy to see where there would be a line of thought considering the law against slavery states except in the case of imprisonment.

If you're reacting to me: the cousins I refer to are half-black, half-Hispanic, and I'm 99% certain they're going to encounter some shit in their lives that I never will based on ethnicity.


#48

Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Zero Esc said:
The pixel quality there makes it look like he's unshaven, like he's been tapping that pencil for days.
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He is unshaven. Conan sported a beard for quite awhile.

Zero Esc said:
If you're reacting to me: the cousins I refer to are half-black, half-Hispanic
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Oh shit, statistically they're going to jail.[/quote]


#49

Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Ravenpoe said:
He is unshaven. Conan sported a beard for quite awhile.
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He needs to stop whacking that pencil then.


Oh shit, statistically they're going to jail.
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Only for being adorable!

But that's what I mean; I feel like at some point at least the boy of the twins is going to get profiled by his ethnicity and charged for something he didn't do. One of his moms is going to change her "they only put people on trial if they're guilty" stance real fast then.

I harp on this stuff because of all that I read in the news. For minorities, if you surrender, you get kicked and beat and maybe your testicles popped, if you don't, you get killed. And I know that would never happen to me--I'm a blond eyes, blue hair white American straight male with a plain American accent and I have knowledge of my rights. The only thing of minority to me is my religion, and that's really a non-issue for people who don't have to shout about it to everyone they meet. I don't have to be scared of the police; I can depend on them. I want that for everyone.


#50

Chad Sexington

Chad Sexington

PatrThom said:
Well yeah, oppression is an amazing way to increase productivity.

--Patrick
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Many economists, including Adam Smith, believe that slavery is actually inefficient and less productive than paid work by free people.


#51

sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

Zero Esc said:
I feel like there are people still pissed that they can't enslave other people.
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Or pissed that their states were economically stagnated by the war and reconstruction. It was not until the need during WWII for war production factories to be decentralized that the southern economies got away from only farming and natural resources.


#52

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

sixpackshaker said:
Or pissed that their states were economically stagnated by the war and reconstruction. It was not until the need during WWII for war production factories to be decentralized that the southern economies got away from only farming and natural resources.
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This is as much the fault of the South as it is the North for destroying their economy. They had the money and opportunity to diversify their economy away from agriculture and natural resources, but instead choose to keep things as they were. What the plantation owners could have done is setup their economy as a one stop shop for textile manufacturer, where everything from growing the cotton to making the fabric to making the clothes happened in one location (kind of like production works in China). Instead they refused to change and the south never really recovered.


#53

Krisken

Krisken

I'm noticing a theme. Refusal to change with the times being the doom of the southern states.


#54

GasBandit

GasBandit

Krisken said:
I'm noticing a theme. Refusal to change with the times being the doom of the southern states.
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It sure did in the Browncoats, too.


#55

DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Krisken said:
I'm noticing a theme. Refusal to change with the times being the doom of the southern states.
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150 years and things haven't changed. Replace agriculture with coal, and you've got WV. When the political platform from either party is nothing but whore themselves out to coal and attack the president, why should I muster up the energy to even spit in your face, let alone vote for you?


#56

PatrThom

PatrThom

Chad Sexington said:
Many economists, including Adam Smith, believe that slavery is actually inefficient and less productive than paid work by free people.
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It stands to reason that "loyalty slavery" (that is, people who do a thing because they wholeheartedly believe in it and want it to succeed) would be the most efficient and productive, but when "productivity" is quantitatively measured as a ratio of (work accomplished/money spent), outright slavery would give the highest ratio, since that would push the denominator very close to zero.

--Patrick


#57

tegid

tegid

PatrThom said:
It stands to reason that "loyalty slavery" (that is, people who do a thing because they wholeheartedly believe in it and want it to succeed) would be the most efficient and productive, but when "productivity" is quantitatively measured as a ratio of (work accomplished/money spent), outright slavery would give the highest ratio, since that would push the denominator very close to zero.

--Patrick
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Well, you can't push the denominator arbitrarily close to zero, there's a limit in the cost of keeping your workers alive (fed, mostly). If the denominator has a limit as to how low it can go, then in general both quantities matter for the ratio.


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