Who Would You Fight For North Or South Where You Live Today...

I can't see myself committing treason in order to defend slavery. Who can?
If your citizenship was gave you by your state, it would seem the only treason would be to not follow your state. It would have nothing to do with slavery, especially since the US was continuing slavery as well....suppose if one didn't want to defend slavery they would have fled to Canada......

Being a Missourian, I would have answered the call of the MSG.

It would seem no different then today now that citizenship is granted by the country. It's fine to debate if we should go to war and for what reasons, but once the decision is made, you follow the course set. Which seemed true then as most from both sides did indeed follow their states.
 
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Nice Flags "Chaloner". I'm doing family genealogy for two friends in the office. His GGG GF was in the 142nd PA and her GG GF was in the 1st NC. They were both in brigades that pretty much opposed each other in the Battle of the wilderness, with the latter Being wounded.

All my direct paternal ancestors were in Fayette County VA/WV where there was a civil war within the war.
Do you know which company?
 
As much as any state during this period, Kentucky truly was a land divided. Although I have ancestors who fought for the Union, I would have cast my lot with the Confederacy. Not in the defense of slavery, but rather for the right of a people to determine their own destiny under a government of their choice. The causes of the war and why men chose to fight for a particular side are IMO, two distinctly different things. Every man, on both sides, had their own very personal reasons for risking their lives by going to war.

Perhaps I would have served with John Hunt Morgan or under Breckinridge in the Orphan Brigade.
 
Honestly? Unless I lived in a border state, I'd fight for whichever way my state went - because that's how I would have been raised; that's what my religious leaders would have preached; that's what my politicians would have pontificated; that's what my newspapers would have railed on about; that's what my patrician community leaders would have embodied; that's what the passionate mobs would have been shouting; that's what my neighbors and friends would be fired up about; that's the positon that would bring me the least ostracization, hatred or retribution; That's where my blood would boil on hearing the death of someone locally that I knew; That's what my sweetheart would expect of me.

I'd love to say I'd be logical, legal, issue-based and rational.

But in reality, I'd probably be driven by the emotional attachments to where I was.

Like most of us today.
 
There are historical questions still to be debated. But the jury is back on the Confederacy. It was a bad idea.

If confronted with policies that I oppose, given that, like the white southerners of 1850s, I have plenty of ways I can express my opposition without bloodshed, I would do so.
 
Being in Oregon I'd have probably not joined anything. In 1861 our Democrat governor wouldn't even raise any companies to replace the regulars because he didn't want to get involved in "Lincoln's war" (that changed a year or so later when a Republican got elected but Oregon didn't supply any troops for the war; home troops fought Indians).

Southern Oregon was strongly pro-confederate and many elsewhere thought the war an easterners problem and just didn't want to get involved, although almost everybody wanted the Union to remain intact (excepting a few radicals that wanted Oregon and California to become a separate country). Only a handful of Oregonians went back east to fight on either side.
 
Indian Terr. but, my ancstors were German emigrants coming to the U.S and ending up in Mo. during the 1850. So, if I fought at all, it would I believe be as a Unionist.
 
There are historical questions still to be debated. But the jury is back on the Confederacy. It was a bad idea.

If confronted with policies that I oppose, given that, like the white southerners of 1850s, I have plenty of ways I can express my opposition without bloodshed, I would do so.
The Confederacy wasn't a bad idea but a good idea poorly executed. I'm with the South.
 
If it's 1861 where you live today which side you would fight for? I live in San Diego back then Southern California wanted to secede from California and join the Confederacy. So I believe I would be a reb. :lee: :sabre:

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A 21st century question asked of 21st century people is worth how much in a 19th century Civil War?

It may feel "good" or "right" to answer one way or another but what it truly means is it's an utterly worthless call.
 
Where I live today the permanent population im 1860 was effectively zero.

My 1860 ancestors were in parts of KY and WV, but they all sat out the war for various reasons.

Personally, I'm a die-hard Unionist.

I live in San Diego back then Southern California wanted to secede from California and join the Confederacy.

Citation Needed.

I can't see myself committing treason in order to defend slavery. Who can?

But them Yankee tyrants is invading my home state! I've got to fight for mah freedom!

I would be reluctant to fight to keep people in the Union who didn't want to be.

The secessionists had no good reason to leave. They left in response to a free and fair democratic election because they were dissatisfied with the result. They left unilaterally rather than making any effort to use Congress to effect peaceful, multilateral, mutually acceptable separation.

They deserved to be stomped into oblivion.
 
But them Yankee tyrants is invading my home state! I've got to fight for mah freedom!
More like "mah" slavery.

I mean, I'm alive now, in 2020. I can't conceive of it. A hypothetical person living in 1860 would be a different person with different ideas. But the question is really is our hypothetical southerner white or black?
 
The Union forever! I live in California which didn’t send any regular units east but many went east on their own to join both sides. I might do that but there were also a number of Confederate plots and some some guerrilla warfare in California and Oregon so I might want to stay and defend against that.
 
More like "mah" slavery.

Ironic to fight for freedom that included freedom to own slaves and freedom from the federal government abolishing slavery.

But I think the apologists are right that the average Confederate soldier was, while by no means anti-slavery, motivated by more of a stubbornness and pride. "You ain't from here. You ain't one of us. You can't tell me what to do." That attitude seems as Southern as fried okra.
 
The Union forever! I live in California which didn’t send any regular units east but many went east on their own to join both sides. I might do that but there were also a number of Confederate plots and some some guerrilla warfare in California and Oregon so I might want to stay and defend against that.

While there were pro-confederates and pro-confederate newspapers (five of which got shut down) in Oregon there were no incidents of guerilla warfare. I don't think such actually happened in California, either, but things were a bit more complicated there and I'm not as up on California's war-time history so I'll not challenge that assertion. Oregon, though, I know about and such didn't happen. There were a small number of men who for a while thought it might be a good thing for Oregon and parts of California to secede and become a Pacific Republic but they didn't want to join the confederacy (and never got very far with their ideas).
 
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While there were pro-confederates and pro-confederate newspapers (five of which got shut down) in Oregon there were no incidents of guerilla warfare. I don't think such actually happened in California, either, but things were a bit more complicated there and I'm not as up on California's war-time history so I'll not challenge that assertion. Oregon, though, I know about and such didn't happen. There were a small number of men who for a while thought it might be a good thing for Oregon and parts of California to secede and become a Pacific Republic but they didn't want to join the confederacy (and never got very far with their ideas).

There was a little of what could be called guerrilla warfare or bushwhacking in California late in the war but certainly it was nothing like in the eastern border states. But yeah, I would have almost certainly been disappointed if my goal was to actually fight.


 
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