Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
Dear Battalion,
Quibbling with an isolated quote from a book you claim "can't stand" isn't a real critique or an argument that uses reason, or holds water.
Confronted with a well researched work by a respected historian that utterly contradicts the myth of thousands of "black confederates" you can have two choices:
a. sarcasm, insults, quibbles
b. thinking that maybe, just maybe, you were wrong. And that you would have to do a little more thinking about this issue.
The south may or may not have been monolithic, but its leadership was very close to being single minded on the issue of slavery and emancipation and they were the gov't in Richmond. Which is why, that gov't could not bring itself to emancipate their slaves, even to save the Confederacy.
Folks, you gotta remember (please?) that the Confederate government was not necessarily the government of the southern people. I suspect there wasn't much either government could have done to rectify the slavery situation much faster than what actually occurred. It's a work in progress.
__________________ Ancestors in US Army: 13th TN Cav; 10th TN Cav; 3rd NC Inf
Ancestors in CSA Army: 48th VA; 63rd VA, 5th NC Cav; 37th NC
Wife and Grandson's CSA: 15th AL, 51st GA, 41st TN; 36th TN; GA Mil 1197 Dist
Dear Battalion,
Quibbling with an isolated quote from a book you claim "can't stand" isn't a real critique or an argument that uses reason, or holds water.
"Isolated" quote?
I only gave you the key item.
He spends 2 or 3 pages trying to convince us that Cleburne and Lee were unrepentant pro-slavers.
Cleburne is "a tested upholder of bondage"/"firmly in the proslavery camp" because:
...of an association with Thomas C. Hindman
...and was a member of the "most proslavery wing" of the Democratic party.
His source: Craig Symonds' Stonewall of the West.
Levine fails to mention the reason Cleburne joined the Democratic party (which is also in Symonds' book)-
The only other significant political party in Arkansas in the mid to late 1850s was the anti-foreigner/anti-Catholic Know Nothings. (Hint: Cleburne was an Irish immigrant.)
A Detroit-based group in the mid-to-late 1970s, headed by Bruce Levine (aka Bruck Landau) and Shelley Kramer. Formed from a 1976 split from the [International So******ts]?. This group of about thirty to forty people had rethought the [International So******ts]?' theory of 'state capitalism', coming up with their own variant.
After discussions with then-So******t Workers Party member Tim Wohlforth, the group would merge with the So******t Workers Party in August 1977. They were then dispersed throughout the country, joining different party branches."
I quite understand reading a book that you find objectionable or that you think lacks historical truth and sources. I feel the very same way when I have read The South Was Right or The Real Lincoln to name but two. Charles Adams views on the tariff being the cause of the war causes simular feelings of dismay and disbelief, but the important thing was to read them to know where the author(s) were coming from.
Thank you for taking the time to read a book that you find very hard to stomach and digest and for providing a quote from it you find objectionable. Could you please explain in more detail why you find this quote from the author so objectionable as to Cleburne, Davis and Lee where he found these men to be in the 'pro-slavery camp?'
In my own opinion, Davis and Lee were slaveholders or practiced slaveholding for a time. Lee dispaired of slavery, but took no active stance against it or to see it abolished. Was Cleburne a slaveholder? Did he support it? Was he active in trying to abolish it or did he speak out against it? If he did, what did his fellow Southerners think of him when he did?
Sincerely,
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Larry I am not sure what you mean by the Confederate Gov't, not 'necessarily' being the gov't of the southern people. Unionists' could claim that all forms of gov'ts in the so-called Confederate States of America were illegal, having not status in law. But, could southerners supporting the legality of secession, make such a claim?
In any case, the great majority of the CSA Congressmen were slave holders and in the end, with the war visibly coming to an close and defeat striding across the south, those claiming to govern the south from Richmond, would not (Could Not?) emancipate slaves, to even attempt to save themselves, much less their country.
Folks, you gotta remember (please?) that the Confederate government was not necessarily the government of the southern people. I suspect there wasn't much either government could have done to rectify the slavery situation much faster than what actually occurred. It's a work in progress.
Well said Larry; thank you for stating something that escapes too many people. The Civil War was not a North South thing as so many think but a National argument w/ significant pockets sympathetic to each side all over the place.
__________________ Shane Christen
American Legion Post 352
SUVCW Camp Abernethy# 48
Lifetime NRA member
3rd MN VI
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Eccl 1:18
"...each of these men [Patrick Cleburne, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis] was a tested upholder of bondage....firmly in the pro-slavery camp..."
Really? Cleburne and Lee on the same footing as Jefferson Davis on the subject of slavery?
That's a mischaracterization. He said Lee, Cleburne, and Davis were tested upholders of bondage. He said Cleburne and his longtime associate Thomas C. Hindman were firmly in the proslavery camp. He did not say they were all on the same footing when it came to slavery.
One can be proslavery and not have slaves. That does not put them on the same footing as a slaveholder on the subject of slavery.
One can be proslavery but not as rabid as another supporter of slavery. The two are not on the same footing on the subject of slavery.
Lee regarded the master-slave relationship as the best that could exist between the white and black races while intermixed in the same country. Cleburne was deeply involved in supporting the most proslavery wing of the Democrats, along with Hindman.
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