sgtcsa said:
You're stooping pretty low there buddy, I believe you would do better to refrain from name calling.
Please show me where I have called anyone names.
sgtcsa said:
The sarcasm you show, shouldn't be done here. I don't care if you call me names, however, I do take offense at calling someone who has been more than a credible contributer to this board, some, almost racially toned epithet,
What in the wide world of sports are you talking about? Please show me.
sgtcsa said:
Say what you will to me, but it would be much better if you proved to be a better example of our own county, than to belittle or name call someone from another country who sees things a little differently than you, and perhaps, therein lies the rub, in that, not only does he espouse the Southern view, but he is from across the pond, maybe that's the difference. I probably will hear about this, but I care about my friends, so thus I couldn't help but speak out.
Are you talking about me saying we Americans were superior to those pansy Brits and we've refrained from kicking their butts? Isn't it plain to see that was a joke? Good grief, get a sense of humor, go outside and walk in the woods, do something, but most of all get real. Nothing about that was inappropriate in any way. I'm not going to refrain from joking with Bill even if some humorless soul goes off on a silly rant about it. As to being oh so upset about imagined name-calling, perhaps you ought to look at your own glass house before you start throwing stones.
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Here is a statement that I totally disagree with, that all Southeners believed in slavey. Your answer:
I will if shown credible, verifiable evidence. But I'm not going to believe it on faith just because you make the claim. For southern society, slavery was too ingrained for them not to know what they were fighting for.
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I can tell you this, My ancestors did NOT fight that conflict to protect slavery. I know in my heart, and mind, and from my own ancestors, that slavery was the last thing that my gg-grandfather went into battle, looking down the barrels of those weapons they faced, wanted to protect.
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Sorry to break the news to you, but gg-grandpappy accepted the idea of slavery as the natural order of things and knew that if the confederacy won slavery would be perpetuated. He didn't want blacks taken out of slavery because it was the first step in giving them equality with whites. When he said he was fighting for southern rights, he knew darn well that slavery was the big southern right he was fighting for.
"It would be wrong, however, to assume that Confederate soldiers were constantly preoccupied with this matter. In fact, only 20 percent of the sample of 429 Southern soldiers explicitly voiced proslavery convictions in their letters or diaries. As one might expect, a much higher percentage of soldiers from slaveholding families than from nonslaveholding families expressed such a purpose: 33 percent, compared with 12 percent. Ironically, the proportion of Union soldiers who wrote about the slavery question was greater, as the next chapter will show. There is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox. Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for most Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern 'rights' and institutions for which they fought, and did not feel compelled to discuss it. Although only 20 percent of the soldiers avowed explicit proslavery purposes in their letters and diaries, NONE AT ALL [emphasis in original] dissented from that view. But even those who owned slaves and fought consciously to defend the institution preferred to discourse upon liberty, rights, and the horrors of subjugation." [James M. McPherson,
For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, pp. 109-110]
"The vandals of the North . . . are determined to destroy slavery . . . We must all fight, and I choose to fight for southern rights and southern liberty." [Lunsford Yandell, Jr. to Sally Yandell, April 22, 1861 in James M. McPherson,
For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, p. 20]
"A stand must be made for African slavery or it is forever lost." [William Grimball to Elizabeth Grimball, Nov. 20, 1860, Ibid.]
"This country without slave labor would be completely worthless. We can only live & exist by that species of labor; and hence I am willing to fight for the last." [William Nugent to Eleanor Nugent, Sept 7, 1863, Ibid., p. 107]
"Better, far better! endure all the horrors of civil war than to see the dusky sons of Ham leading the fair daughters of the South to the altar." [William M. Thomson to Warner A. Thomson, Feb. 2, 1861, Ibid., p. 19]
"A captain in the 8th Alabama also vowed 'to fight forever, rather than submit to freeing negroes among us. . . . [We are fighting for] rights and property bequeathed to us by our ancestors.' " [Elias Davis to Mrs. R. L. Lathan, Dec. 10, 1863 Ibid., p. 107]
"Even though he was tired of the war, wrote a Louisiana artilleryman in 1862, ' I never want to see the day when a negro is put on an equality with a white person. There is too many free n-i-g-g-e-r-s. . . now to suit me, let alone having four millions.' " [George Hamill Diary, March, 1862, Ibid., p. 109]
"A private in the 38th North Carolina, a yeoman farmer, vowed to show the Yankees ' that a white man is better than a n-i-g-g-e-r.' " [Jonas Bradshaw to Nancy Bradshaw, April 29, 1862 Ibid.]
"A farmer from the Shenandoah Valley informed his fiancée that he fought to assure 'a free white man's government instead of living under a black republican government.' " [John G. Keyton to Mary Hilbert, Nov. 30, 1861, Ibid.]
"The son of another North Carolina dirt farmer said he would never stop fighting the Yankees, who were 'trying to force us to live as the colored race.' " [Samuel Walsh to Louisa Proffitt, April 11, 1864, Ibid.]
"Some of the boys asked them what they were fighting for, and they answered, 'You Yanks want us to marry our daughters to the n-i-g-g-e-r-s.' " [Chauncey Cook to parents, May 10, 1864, Ibid.]
"An Arkansas captain was enraged by the idea that if the Yankees won, his 'sister, wife, and mother are to be given up to the embraces of their present dusky male servitors.' " [Thomas Key, diary entry April 10, 1864, Ibid.]
"Another Arkansas soldier, a planter, wrote his wife that Lincoln not only wanted to free the slaves but also 'declares them entitled to all the rights and privileges as American citizens. So imagine your sweet little girls in the school room with a black wooly headed negro and have to treat them as their equal.' " [William Wakefield Garner to Henrietta Garner, Jan 2, 1864, Ibid.]
"[If Atlanta and Richmond fell] we are irrevocably lost and not only will the negroes be free but . . . we will all be on a common level. . . . The negro who now waits on you will then be as free as you are & as insolent as she is ignorant.' " [Allen D. Chandler to wife, July 7, 1864, Ibid.]
"The South had always been solid for slavery and when the quarrel about it resulted in a conflict of arms, those who had approved the policy of disunion took the pro-slavery side. It was perfectly logical to fight for slavery, if it was right to own slaves." [John S. Mosby,
Mosby's Memoirs, p. 20]
They didn't die on those fields and woodlands to keep some black man in bondage.
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Yes, in fact they did. See the above.
If GG-Grandpappy was a thinking man, and I suspect he was, then he knew exactly what secession was all about and what he was fighting for--the preservation of slavery.
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery." [Mississippi Declaration of Causes for Secession]
"For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery." [Georgia Declaration of Causes for Secession]
"We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
"That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states." [Texas Declaration of Causes for Secession]
Perhaps it's time to take GG-Grandpappy down off the altar and see him as a real, flesh-and-blood human being with all the attitudes and beliefs of everyone else living in his region in his time period.
Regards,
Cash