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Confederate soldiers=terrorists

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by novelist_wannabe, Apr 11, 2010.

  1. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    The Confederacy fought a conventional war. So they were not terrorists, but traitors
     
  2. Bob Crotchet

    Bob Crotchet Member

    Does one incident constitute a "wave?" Not saying you're absolutely wrong, just that I haven't noticed it. ... As for the rest, I think Southerners (and others) have been romanticizing the Civil War -- and most other wars -- for a long time. And I'm not enough of a history buff to say whether the portrayals of Lee and Grant are accurate, "romanticized" or flat-out wrong.
     
  3. Bob Crotchet

    Bob Crotchet Member

    I'm not arguing, just curious: Do you think the same of the Revolutionary War?
     
  4. dreunc1542

    dreunc1542 Active Member

    This sort of revisionist history surrounding the Civil War is really nothing new. This has been studied for quite some time: http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Lost-Cause-Civil-History/dp/0253338220.
     
  5. Smallpotatoes

    Smallpotatoes Well-Known Member

    How could they be terrorists? They weren't Mooslims.
     
  6. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    The colonies were occupied territory. The southern states freely joined a binding confederation.
     
  7. crimsonace

    crimsonace Well-Known Member

    ... and because they had freely joined the United States of America (note they were states, and not provinces, because state sovereignty was supposed to be guaranteed), they believed they had the right to freely leave the United States of America.

    That is the question on which a lot of the Civil War arguments are held -- not slavery (which is nearly-universally agreed to be a moral wrong today, even in the South). Did the Union have the right to force the Confederate states to unwillingly remain in the United States of America against their will? Because they invaded and won, the answer is yes.
     
  8. Flying Headbutt

    Flying Headbutt Moderator Staff Member

    Invaded? What the fuck?
     
  9. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    There were no provisions for leaving the union. And the root issue was not certain states' way of life; it was over nullification
     
  10. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    Oh. it was the confederacy that started it with the attack on Fort Sumter
     
  11. crimsonace

    crimsonace Well-Known Member

    In the South's viewpoint (which I am not taking, BTW, just playing devil's advocate mostly), yes. Nearly all of the war was fought on Confederate soil (Antietam & Gettysburg being notable exceptions). The Confederate states believed they had the right to secede because they had lost their voice in Congress, and the Union states believed they didn't. It was an issue not covered in the Constitution.

    When South Carolina seceded, Lincoln tried to send provisions to a Union base on Confederate soil. The Confederates believed their territory had been breached, it was bombarded, Fort Sumter fell, and the war was on.

    What offends me are the number of people in our (northern) state that fly the Rebel X (which was NOT the official flag of the Confederacy). The Confederacy lasted four years. No defeated state/territory/area has been more romanticized while existing in a shorter amount of time.
     
  12. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    A large reason why Southerners like to claim that the war was fought for states rights was geography.

    Travel wasn't very common back in those days. Railroads had only just started, and roads weren't built very well. Traveling 50 miles was an all-day thing, rather than something that can be done in 40 minutes or so today (depending on how fast you're driving). Traveling beyond that was seen as practically visiting a foreign country.

    That's why Americans, especially Southerners, were very loyal to their state, more than the overall country. Lee resigned from the US Army because Virginia had seceded. Had the state remained with the Union, Lee would have stayed (and he had been offered the command of the Army by Lincoln, but refused, another great what-if).

    So, when Lincoln was elected, Southerners felt that distant Washington was going to regulate their way of life. Or at least, that's what they were told by the wealthy elite (i.e., plantation slaveholders), in order to rally them to fight. Most Southerners didn't own slaves. So, the slaveowners appealed to their state pride.
     
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