Civil War History - "What if..." DiscussionsWhat if they had attacked instead of digging in...? What if he was in charge of the army instead...? Did you ever have a "What if..." question, and you weren't sure where to post it? Here's the place to ask these speculative questions!
There are some neat scenarios to the what if theme. A CSA win could have led to the West being handed to them without firing a shot. The reason Canada had no Indian Wars is that the Canadians honored the contracts with the Indians. If the South had kept their word the Indians would have welcomed them into the areas. Because the North had broken treaties before the Civil War the Indians didn't even want to listen to them.
With the ending of slavery, Europe would trade with the South fully. England and France understood that America could now intervene in European and thus, world affairs. They did not trust the direction the North was going in.
Canada would establish relations with the South but I don't know about Mexico. However the rebels like Geronimo would be dealt with by Indian troops.
The depression in the 1890's probably would have made any vestiges of slavery too costly, but would there have been a depression in the south? They would have been worldwide financially.
Now, it is also interesting to contemplate what would have happened if the South had kept the gold standard!
To revisionists', everything the confederacy wanted, is expected to be handed to them; preferably on a a silver platter, apparently.
Sorry to inform many revisionists, but the attitude of most southerners to towards American Indians (and women) reflected Thomas Jefferson's. In Fact, the 5 civilized tribes already had first hand experience concerning southern (and southern born President's) attitudes toward indians, long before the CW.
The ultimate revisionist fantasy, i.e. after winning the war to protect slavery, the south would free their slaves.
I wonder if revisionists every sit down and calculate, whether Canada, needed southern cotton or northern food stuffs and manufactures?
The south would have been worldwide in what, exactly???
If there was no depression in the south (in the 1890's), why would the last vestiges of slavery be affected by it?
If the South had won the hard fought Civil War, what exactly would have been the source of the south's gold standard? It couldn't be cheap (slave produced) cotton could it? To stay on the Gold Standard, after the Civil War, the south would have to stay a slave based society.
There are some neat scenarios to the what if theme. A CSA win could have led to the West being handed to them without firing a shot. The reason Canada had no Indian Wars is that the Canadians honored the contracts with the Indians. If the South had kept their word the Indians would have welcomed them into the areas. Because the North had broken treaties before the Civil War the Indians didn't even want to listen to them.
Balderdash. As has already been pointed out to you, "the South" had just as lousy a record on breaking treaties and abusing Indians as "the North" did. Many of the tribes would have first-hand memories of being tossed out of Southern lands so that Southerners could take their homes and farms. The Apaches murdered by Colonel Butler, the military governor of the Arizona Territory, and those he was willing to order the murder of, would object to your ideas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ Psychomike
With the ending of slavery, Europe would trade with the South fully. England and France understood that America could now intervene in European and thus, world affairs. They did not trust the direction the North was going in.
LOL. This is a mirage.
Europe already traded fully with the United states, and thus with the South, before the Civil War. Prior to the Civil War, the US had such a weak military there was no risk of our seriously intervening elsewhere: it was the secession of the South that caused the military buildup that extended US strength so much. Also, in reality, most of the direct threats to British and French and Spanish interests would have come from an expansion of the Confederacy into Central America, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Carribean.
Just FYI: by the late 1850s and early 1860s, there were poor crops and a food shortage in northern Europe. Britain and France were buying food in New York, largely shipped by rail from the states north of the Ohio River. The Europeans were not likely to start a war or take any other action they could avoid that would interrupt their food supply.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ Psychomike
Canada would establish relations with the South but I don't know about Mexico.
Canada was not an independent country until two years after the end of the Civil War. The colonies and provinces that make Canada today were ruled directly by Britain. As a result, we can understand that you are wrong here at least in the short run.
Mexico sent a mission to discuss diplomatic relations with the Confederacy around March of 1861, when they were still forming their government in Montgomery, AL. Jefferson Davis refused to meet with them -- an amazing thing -- because he felt it would be personally embarassing if he did so and then led an invasion of Mexico within a short period of time. You already know this, because I have pointed it out to you previously.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ Psychomike
However the rebels like Geronimo would be dealt with by Indian troops.
Geronimo was not a "rebel" within the Apache nation, and what "Indian troops" are you talking about?
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ Psychomike
The depression in the 1890's probably would have made any vestiges of slavery too costly, but would there have been a depression in the south? They would have been worldwide financially.
What is it you think the Confederacy would have done with all these newly freed slaves in a bust economy? Are you picturing mass riots over food? Breadlines? Concentration camps of some sort? What?
BTW: much more likely the migration of the Boll Weevil and the increased competition in cotton from worldwide sources after the war would create the problem earlier.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ Psychomike
Now, it is also interesting to contemplate what would have happened if the South had kept the gold standard!
The US remained on the Gold Standard until the Great Depression (70 years after the Civil War). Assuming the South did succeed in becoming a viable nation, she would have had no meaningful supply of gold unless she went out and conquered Mexico, California, or some such place. Is that the world you are envisioning?
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
They lost at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. That cause the withdrawal from Columbus, Kentucky. Island #10 was captured. The defeat of the Confederate ironclads on the Mississippi River resulted in the fall of Memphis. New Orleans had fallen. Confederates retreated from Nashville.
By mid-1862, a great deal of the "independent" Confederacy was lost.
The Indians gave their reasons for joining the Confederate side of the war:
But in the Northern States the Cherokee people saw with alarm a violated Constitution, all civil liberty put in peril, and all the rules of civilized warfare and the dictates of common humanity and decency unhesitatingly disregarded. In States which still adhered to the Union a military despotism has displaced the civil power and the laws became silent amid arms. Free speech and almost free thought became a crime. The right to the writ of habeas corpus, guaranteed by the Constitution, disappeared at the nod of a Secretary of State or a general of the lowest grade. The mandate of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was set at naught by the military power, and this outrage on common right approved by a President sworn to support the Constitution. War on the largest scale was waged, and the immense bodies of troops called into the field in the absence of any law warranting it under the pretense of suppressing unlawful combination of men. The humanities of war, which even barbarians respect, were no longer thought worthy to be observed. Foreign mercenaries and the scum of cities and the inmates of prisons were enlisted and organized into regiments and brigades and sent into Southern States to aid in subjugating a people struggling for freedom, to burn, to plunder, and to commit the basest of outrages on women; while the heels of armed tyranny trod upon the necks of Maryland and Missouri, and men of the highest character and position were incarcerated upon suspicion and without process of law in jails, in forts, and in prison-ships, and even women were imprisoned by the arbitrary order of a President and Cabinet ministers; while the press ceased to be free, the publication of newspapers was suspended and their issues seized and destroyed; the officers and men taken prisoners in battle were allowed to remain in captivity by the refusal of their Government to consent to an exchange of prisoners; as they had left their dead on more than one field of battle that had witnessed their defeat to be buried and their wounded to be cared for by Southern hands. Whatever causes the Cherokee people may have had in the past, to complain of some of the Southern States, they cannot but feel that their interests and their destiny are inseparably connected with those of the South. The war now raging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude; against the commercial freedom of the South, and against the political freedom of the States, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those States and utterly change the nature of the General Government.
Because we are use to the Constitution being ignored, abuse of that same document is hard for us to see as a reason to go to war. The Lakotas apparently, thought those documents were worth fighting for.
The website you give is another libertarin/neoconfederate site that can hardly be called unbiased. If your posts are like this, you need to distance yourself, read some real history and learn from this sites mistakes.
Don't base your views on verbal quicksand.
Unionblue
PS It would be impossible to tell what a Central Ohioian would think of the Constitution based on this sludge, let alone a Lakota Indian.
__________________ "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
The document the link goes to is the legit word for word Lakota statement which I find fascinating in that it reminds me of the brute force the nation, North AND South was up against. As they watched the Constitution shredded, any slight the South had done to the Indians was made insignificant.
Studying Lincoln and leaving out the crushing of rights, armed troops firing to disperse crowds, is like teaching Nam and leaving out Kent State!
The impact Lincoln would have on the power hungry would lead to Japanese and German families placed in relocation camps, the jailing of a film director by Woodrow Wilson for making a film on the Revolution, the baiting of nations into war, the censorship of the press in wartime (which lasted until Nam), rushing into wars with no plans for what to do should you win, going around the legislature to declare wars, etc. You know the drill.
His legacy is a very dark side of the American dream.
Once again, DJ the slippery slope of Presidential expanson of Constitutional powers, was blazed by Thomas Jefferson. It was a well worn path, before the coming of Lincoln.
The worst Lincoln could be accused of, was he continued his predecessors' bad habits (from a revisionist viewpoint, that is)
The website you give is another libertarin/neoconfederate site that can hardly be called unbiased. If your posts are like this, you need to distance yourself, read some real history and learn from this sites mistakes.
Don't base your views on verbal quicksand.
Unionblue
PS It would be impossible to tell what a Central Ohioian would think of the Constitution based on this sludge, let alone a Lakota Indian.
Within months of the document DJ is referring to, Chief John Ross (one of the signers of the document) was on the Union side and in Washington, negotiating with Abraham Lincoln personally in the White House. A regiment of Cherokee troops (organized for service under the Union) escorted him to Union territory. Ross stayed in Washington until
1865, acting as a representative for the Cherokee and other tribes.
The Confederacy had, between October of 1861 and July of 1862, failed to fullfill many of the promises made in their agreement with the Cherokees and other tribes. In part this may have been due to the stress and defeats of the war; in part perhaps to unrealistic promises by Confederate agents; and perhaps in part to promises not intended to be seriously believed. In any case, the Cherokee and other tribes were not avid supporters of secession, nor did they trust the Confederates any more than they did the United States. They were merely stuck in a bad situation by the Civil War, trying to steer the best course for them over a stormy sea. When the war started, it looked like it would be better to side with the Confederates (who were closer and loomed as a more dangerous enemy to make at that moment) and within less than a year it looked like maybe it was the US they should side with. The Cherokee were split over this, and suffered for having chosen a side in the struggles of others.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
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