Talk:Confederate States of America

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United Daughters of the Confederacy[edit]

The United daughters of the confederacy were essentially a bunch of southern socialites that put up a large percentage of the monuments and racist textbooks. This was part of the larger Lost Cause movement. I think we should include more about this, of course without too much pedantic detail. ^{— Unsigned, by: TooMuchGishGallop / talk / contribs}

Terrorist organization?[edit]

This page is categorized to "Terrorist organizations", but it is not really explained in the article text. I certainly don't want to defend them, but to me it seems that the CSA was more like an insurgent organization. While they committed some atrocities and the slavery perperated by them was absolutely horrible, at least AFAIK they mostly fought according to the conventions of war of the time. --Capacitor (talk) 19:45, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

I actually agree with this. The Confederacy was a rival government, not a terrorist organization.

DuceMoosolini^{Your friendly RW dictator moderator} 19:48, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

There's nothing racist about this flag.[edit]

Seriously folks. I also don't freak out over the LGBT pride flag. Get over it. I hope Mississippi will keep their flag. 2003:C3:371F:1300:3444:3FB8:C0C1:76F3 (talk) 00:43, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy beg to differ. Also, make your shitposts more interesting. ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 00:53, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

The Confederacy lasted for 5 years[edit]

This Twitter thread illuminates the many long-time cultural achievements that are more worthy than the Confederacy. --It's-a me, 🎄Lefty Green Mario!🎄 20:13, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Root Cause[edit]

"The CSA remains the root cause of most modern political problems of the United States."

Not only is this line incredibly simplistic, but slavery, which preceded the CSA, is definitely the root cause of both the CSA and the political problems this article is likely attributing to the CSA. 2607:FEA8:5460:5C4:E47C:74C6:9292:9B29 (talk) 03:22, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I think what that line means is that it was slavery (which was, among other things, what caused the Southern states to secede) that lay the foundation for Jim Crow segregation, police brutality, and voter suppression systems designed to perpetuate unfair treatment of Blacks in today's South. --Goatspeed. _{Happy Holidays!}🎄CircularR asoning🎄^{See what I've been messing around with} 03:30, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

The lede[edit]

Not as bad as I'd have imagined, but not particularly good either. The sentence "The CSA formed in 1861 when seven (later expanded to eleven) slave states decided that armed revolt was preferable to tolerating the election of a Republican President whose anti-slavery opinions southern slaveholders deemed a threat to their livelihoods" does not jibe with at least a couple statements Lincoln made.

When Lincoln became president, he stated "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it now exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." After the war began, he said "My paramount objective is to save the Union, and it is 'not' either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it."

If anyone has material to support that sentence from the lede, then please share it. I've removed the sentence for now, since the only source it cites does not seem to support the claim and Lincoln's comments seem to contradict it. Accumulator (talk) 10:31, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

It should go without saying that slavery is morally indefensible. However I get the sense that so much material on the civil war puts little to no emphasis on economic influences, in some cases even denying them explicitly. I'll even go out on a limb and say that this body of material comprises something of an origin myth for modern America. Lincoln's statements are indisputably a part of the public record (see links below) and completely unambiguous. The claim that the war occurred chiefly because of irreconcilable moral difference between the north and south apropos slavery seems doubtful, yet that is exactly what https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_South and many other sources imply or state outright. Accumulator (talk) 17:05, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

https://www.nps.gov/features/liho/1864/32.htm https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp

The documents justifying secession are also part of the public record Ioe bidome (talk) 17:35, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Wars are rarely if ever fought on behalf of the oppressed unless they're fought by the oppressed, which is not really the case in this instance. How do you explain Lincoln's quotes? He seemed willing to negotiate with the south. Accumulator (talk) 17:39, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

An attempt to maintain unity or compromise Ioe bidome (talk) 17:42, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Why didn't they take him up on it if slavery was the major issue at hand? Accumulator (talk) 17:43, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

They didn't trust Lincoln because he was opposed to expansion of slavery, which to them was synonymous with abolishing slavery Ioe bidome (talk) 17:44, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

So they started a full-blown war on a vague suspicion that the president contradicted twice, in front of the entire nation, in no uncertain terms? What did they have to lose by trying to negotiate? Accumulator (talk) 17:48, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes Ioe bidome (talk) 17:50, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, right. Accumulator (talk) 17:52, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

You are aware that Lincoln made speeches about slavery before he was president right? Ioe bidome (talk) 17:54, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I am. Why would he have risked the chance of destroying the union and the certainty of a very bloody war on behalf of southern slaves, when he said at least twice during his presidency that he would not? Again, what would the south have had to lose by negotiating, if slavery was the only issue? Accumulator (talk) 18:02, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Priorities can change. He said those things early in his presidency. Ioe bidome (talk) 18:08, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

https://www.history.com/news/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-lincoln-slavery-and-emancipation The article is mediocre, but I'm sure Lincoln meant it when he said "My paramount objective is to save the Union, and it is 'not' either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it." What if the south had announced they were going to take him up on that? He'd be in an awful bind if he really did value abolition enough to send the nation to war over it.Accumulator (talk) 18:09, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

It's worth mentioning that this sort of did happen. After Lincoln was elected, but before he was inaugurated, Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky tried to bring the seceded states back into the fold by enshrining slavery into the US Constitution so that it couldn't be abolished or limited by Congressional action. President-elect Lincoln vehemently opposed this plan, and he swayed the Republicans in Congress against it. It's one of the big reasons the South didn't trust him on the issue of slavery. (Crittenden himself became a Unionist after the war started).

Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 18:51, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Let's clear some stuff up. Lincoln was a vocal and well-known enemy of slavery, becoming famous for the Lincoln-Douglas debates in which he advocated against its expansion. The Republican Party was also founded with huge influence by abolitionists, with the issue quickly becoming its major unifying force. Therefore, the South was alarmed at Lincoln winning the presidency as the Republican candidate.

Now, Lincoln had no intention of plunging the country into a civil war. He repeatedly stressed that he had no intention of abolishing slavery. Not because he didn't want to, but because the Border States, which had slavery but chose to remain in the Union, were too important to alienate. Especially Maryland. The South, though, didn't trust Lincoln, and they were furthermore resentful of the Northern states of trying to undermine the institution of slavery. Hence the secession.

The Union's war aim was not to abolish slavery at first, but the South's war aim was to create a country where the slavery would be preserved. This can be seen in their declarations of independence. Lincoln, in a precarious political position, maintained for the first years of the war that his only goal was to see the USA reunited. However, as the tide of the war started to turn and the Union armies started winning major victories, and as attitudes towards the South hardened due to mounting casualties, Lincoln was convinced that he could get away with issuing the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. Notably, it only applied to the rebelling states. The Border States were still too important to lose. It was only towards the end of the war, with the South on its way out and Lincoln's reelection looking safe, that a push for the Thirteenth Amendment started.

Lincoln's attitudes are perhaps best summed up by his comments in an 1862 letter to Horace Greeley:

“”My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

In short, the South fought in order to preserve the institution of slavery. The North fought primarily to reunite the Union, but later events enabled abolitionists to make headway for their own cause, culminating in the abolition of slavery. If the Union never had a significant portion of its population who wanted slavery gone, then it never would have been abolished. Hope this clears it up.

Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 18:22, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, it does. Ioe bidome (talk) 18:23, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Another interesting thing to note is that Lincoln wrote that letter to Greeley after he had written a preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. He was sitting on it for just the right moment.

Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 18:26, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Mama mia, it's even less-a-clear than before!Accumulator (talk) 18:26, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Not really. The problem with any "economic factors" arguments is that it frequently leads into Lost Cause of the South whitewashing that tries to minimize the importance of slavery in the war. There was certainly economic factors involved, but the problem is this is just a workaround to the root cause; slaves were a *huge* part of the Southern agrarian economy after all. The North did not have an economy revolving around slavery, perhaps allowing them to think stronger about the morality of slavery. The South's economy was too tied to slaves for them to even consider this question.

And yes, had the South not fought not only to preserve the slavery institution, but *expand* it, I'm not sure if the Civil War would have happened. A huge flash-point leading up to the Civil War was the question of slavery on Western territories. Before the Civil War, there were probably far more "Free Soil" types in the North than outright abolitionists -- those that would allow the South to keep its institution, but opposed westward expansion of slavery. One can perhaps even wonder if what is argued by some historians as the worst Supreme Court decision of all time, Dred Scott, didn't happen, would the Civil War have happened? Essentially, the pendulum of public opinion in the North did not swing to full abolition until probably the middle of the Civil War, when the South showed they were actually willing to secede from the Union over the slavery institution question. BobJohnson (talk) 18:55, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not a scholar of the civil war and I could certainly be wrong, but you've not really addressed my point. Lincoln did not seem to feel so strongly about abolition that he would put the nation through a gruesome civil war just to free the slaves or otherwise "interfere with the institution of slavery", to use his words. He said so himself. The intro of this article states "slave states decided that armed revolt was preferable to tolerating the election of a Republican President whose anti-slavery opinions southern slaveholders deemed a threat to their livelihoods" Supposing this is true, why did negotiation fail if Lincoln was willing to concede this singular issue? Can you provide any literature documenting north/south negotiations before and during the civil war? At least that might provide some picture of what went 'wrong', as it were. Accumulator (talk) 20:30, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

And if you'll forgive me for saying so, I should also point out that the statement "The problem with any "economic factors" arguments is that it frequently leads into Lost Cause of the South whitewashing that tries to minimize the importance of slavery in the war" is question-begging, not a serious argument. Accumulator (talk) 20:42, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I changed the citation, and the text. The immediate threat to the Southern plantation owners who ruled the Southern states was to slavery's expansion to other territories. Lincoln had long been opposed to slavery, but pragmatically he must have known that abolition was impossible at the time of his election due to the anti-democratic nature of the Constitution, the Senate, and the Electoral College. Bongolian (talk) 20:46, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

So the south fought a brutal civil war because of a then-hypothetical concern that Lincoln might prevent the expansion of slavery, despite Lincoln promising that he had no intention whatsoever of doing so if it meant civil war? Again, if you can recommend any particular literature that includes a reasonably complete timeline of negotiations in the few years prior to and during the war, please do. Accumulator (talk) 21:06, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean by "negotiations?" The South was the one that seceded. The final trigger for the South seceding was the election of Lincoln as president. While Lincoln did not campaign on abolition, he did campaign as a "free soil" advocate (no slaves in expanded territories) -- at least, the 1860 Republican party platform stated such. That made Southern slaveholders unhappy. Now, the formation of the Confederacy included the seizure of forts, arsenals, and other US government property, which was a step too far for Lincoln. The South, in effect, fired the first shots (see the Battle of Fort Sumter). That was the "negotiations" the South provided. But it was a long time coming. The slavery question has a very prominent place in American history, with secession rumbles dating even back to the 1830s (see the nullification crisis.)

The American Civil War wiki article is pretty comprehensive and you should get familiar with it, that is, unless you are just asking questions for some reason. BobJohnson (talk) 21:17, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

"What do you mean by 'negotiations?' The South was the one that seceded." What do you mean? Nobody would want to fight a civil war if they could avoid doing so, and I can't think of any other examples where such a war was fought on the behalf of a slave class, sad though it may be. Accumulator (talk) 21:30, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Slavery expansion was more than hypothetical. The South had already been engaging in expansion with the 1820 Missouri Compromise and the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Bongolian (talk) 21:41, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

This seems like a straw-man of my earlier question, which was So the south fought a brutal civil war because of a then-hypothetical concern that Lincoln might prevent the expansion of slavery, despite Lincoln promising that he had no intention whatsoever of doing so if it meant civil war? Accumulator (talk) 21:51, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Second talk thread of yours that someone slaps the "concern troll" label on, you're on a roll, new account. I will relent if you can demonstrate that you actually read my comments, which clearly answered your question (but was followed off with another weird bullshit question that any idiot who read the Wikipedia article I linked to could answer.) BobJohnson (talk) 21:56, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

"Second talk thread of yours that someone slaps the "concern troll" label on" As if the reader were stupid enough to write off the whole argument just because someone applied some insipid image macro. Accumulator (talk) 22:05, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

You're not here to discuss, you're here to obfuscate and derail. To waste time.

Carthage (talk) 22:15, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not, but if you think that then why reply at all? Also, how would one falsify such an accusation? Accumulator (talk) 22:16, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Just to let other people know that engaging with you is a waste of time. That's all. Carthage (talk) 22:21, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

It's an unfalsifiable accusation and an ad hominem on top of that. Accumulator (talk) 22:22, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

You don’t seem to have read my earlier post. One of the big reasons the South feared Lincoln’s intentions was his total rejection of the Crittenden Compromise.

Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 22:25, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

It would have given the south a monopoly on slave labor in perpetuity. It's an absurd proposal by any standard. They couldn't have expected it to pass. Accumulator (talk) 22:43, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

It was an absurd proposal, but the South thought it was a good deal for the GOP since it extended the Missouri Compromise Line to ensure that 2/3rd of the country would be free states. That Lincoln shot it down, to them, proved his radicalism on the slavery issue. After all, if he wouldn’t accept a country that was 2/3rd free, then what would be his logical next desire? A country that is completely free.

Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 23:42, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

"what would be his logical next desire? A country that is completely free." Maybe, but by his own words Lincoln seemed much less willing to compromise on tariffs than emancipation. "I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system and a high protective tariff." You don't think assertions such as "The war began primarily as a result of the longstanding moral crisis over the reliance of the United States on the slave status of a large group of African-Americans. "(https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/American_Civil_War) seem just a bit dubious? It's even contradicted on that very same page a bit farther down: "Historians part company on the extent to which economic issues (like the conflict over tariffs, the varying levels of economic development in an industrializing North as opposed to a largely agricultural South, and even the economic value of slavery) and political issues (such as the debate between the "compact" versus "contract" theories of government) factored into the split." Accumulator (talk) 01:27, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

It's an observation of behavior. You want to "falsify" that observation? Stop acting like a troll. Carthage (talk) 23:45, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

To call someone a troll is to assert they participate not sincerely but with the furtive intent of bothering others. This is unfalsifiable. A cheap ad hominem attack. Accumulator (talk) 02:08, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, yeah, that's what you are doing. Once you actually demonstrate that you've read some of the links or answers (instead of JAQ-off questions and sealioning tactics like requesting for information despite people providing links to plenty of information -- classic!), a discussion is worthwhile. It is not at this point.

From r/AskHistorians, it seems like one of the top one-volume historical books on the run-up to the Civil War is James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Although the Internet Archive version is down thanks to pesky legislation, there's actually a Google books preview that surprisingly has left open a lot. Among the interesting aspects are Southern imperialists who attempted to build a slavery-legal empire (see Knights of the Golden Circle) and another act that stoked tensions over slavery, the Kansas–Nebraska Act. (Plus, the subsequent violence of "Bleeding Kansas" is covered.) It also mentions how the Lincoln–Douglas debates helped platform Lincoln as well as being the stroke that persuaded the Republican party of the time to add "free soil" planks to their platform. Other political angles are covered.

So, for those who want a little more details (as much as can be covered in a one volume book), the un-paywalled text looks like a good start for some nice details, and I'm sure the full book is really good based on what I see in the preview. And I've Googled several other "potential sources" since the actual CSA creation isn't covered by the preview (and Z-Library is down, sigh). But this sort of things takes time, and it is a waste of time to do such if the purpose of said Internet account is to throw back a bunch of questions back and name-check debate fallacies without any evidence. BobJohnson (talk) 03:16, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

99.99% of the reasoning behind secession can ultimately be traced back to slavery, tariffs? Slavery, Federal Government V Southern State Governments? Slavery, and I could go on and on and on and on about all the issues that seem disconnect but in actuality are all about slavery. A somebody. (talk) 02:17, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

That's why I call it an origin myth. The page Lost Cause of the South uses a strawman - I don't see anything in the page about the two Lincoln quotes I reference here and which contradict the central point they're making. One is not trivializing slavery just by saying that other issues factored largely as well. The article appears to make a feeble effort to preempt others from labeling it an "origin myth", as it uses the phrase "lost cause mythos" several times. This could be unintentional, to be fair. I'm sure it's an appropriate term in some of those instances, yet nonetheless it does appear there's an argument to be made in favor of an economic/monetary interpretation rather than a manichaeistic interpretation. Accumulator (talk) 02:48, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Slavery was an economic Institution that made the south a lot of money. A somebody. (talk) 03:03, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Indeed it did. That still doesn't quite support statements like "The war began primarily as a result of the longstanding moral crisis over the reliance of the United States on the slave status of a large group of African-Americans.", which assert that it was a conflict over the moral issue of slavery. Accumulator (talk) 03:06, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Slavery was a social, economic, and moral issue, on that I agree with you. A somebody. (talk) 03:08, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Like I said, I don't claim to be an expert on the history of the war. The argument that it was a moral issue leaves me unconvinced. Accumulator (talk) 03:16, 11 September 2024 (UTC)