Confederate War Aims

[GwilymT]

Picture it, a limited emancipation of sorts. Fight in the Confederate Army, in exchange for emancipation. No set numbers, take all comers.

Service guarantees Freedom. To quasi-rob a quote from Starship Troopers.

The ideal confederacy is the exact type of society Starship Troopers was commenting on. Great analogy!

 

[Desert Kid]

The ideal confederacy is the exact type of society Starship Troopers was commenting on. Great analogy!

Starship Troopers was a screed on arch-nationalism and militarism. I mean gosh, it's recommended reading by the Marine Corps last I checked.

The Confederacy can go one of several directions, the modern definition of fascism isn't one of them. Fascism was a reaction to bolshevism, which spawned from Marxism. It can be a repressive, far-right oligarchy. It can be a middle-of-the-road center right, Jeffersonian Republic. Or it can be mesh of Jeffersonian Republic with a bit of South Africa and Brazil thrown in for good mixture which is what I think it would be.

Either way, the CSA would have been very pro-business, traditionalist, arch-American culture, and have a population that'll be prone to populism given time. I've always guessed that social progress in the CSA would be around 40 years slower than the real life South.

Any progress would come from the Confederacy's Jacksonian middle class demanding a bigger piece of the pie, and that eventually would be targeted at the planter class. That's not quite fascism, that's old-timey American conservatism.

 

[DanSBHawk]

Picture it, a limited emancipation of sorts. Fight in the Confederate Army, in exchange for emancipation. No set numbers, take all comers.

Service guarantees Freedom. To quasi-rob a quote from Starship Troopers.

So, emancipate a few hundred thousand and keep 3 million-plus enslaved? That doesn't sound like he was sacrificing the institution of slavery.

 

[Desert Kid]

So, emancipate a few hundred thousand and keep 3 million-plus enslaved? That doesn't sound like he was sacrificing the institution of slavery.

There wouldn't have been any set numbers or quotas, in theory, literally any number of slaves would have been accepted.

 

[Copperhead-mi]

There wouldn't have been any set numbers or quotas, in theory, literally any number of slaves would have been accepted.

Accepted only with the slave owner's permission or conscripted?

 

[Desert Kid]

Accepted only with the slave owner's permission or conscripted?

Well, Jefferson Davis never got that far before the Confederacy collapsed.

I imagine compensation would be required, no doubt.

 

[leftyhunter]

Well, Jefferson Davis never got that far before the Confederacy collapsed.

I imagine compensation would be required, no doubt.

Why didn't Davis advocate mandatory military service for all fit males and the abolishment of slavery and full equal rights for all Southeners? Compensation issues would be addressed well after the ACW.
Leftyhunter

 

[thomas aagaard]

Well, what I was trying to get at is that with the war aims, Davis was completely ready to sacrifice everything in the name of winning. Winning after all, was the CSA's war aim.

Southern newspapers were bitterly divided about the issue, assuredly you'd get different opinions from Virginia newspapers compared to South Carolina newspapers.

Any sort of mandatory emancipate would be be unconstitutional. even if the government paid the owner.
For a slave to join the csa military his owner would been to approve of it.

The CSA constitution do a pretty god job at protecting the institution of slavery. Even banning states from having a say.

 

[GwilymT]

Why didn't Davis advocate mandatory military service for all fit males and the abolishment of slavery and full equal rights for all Southeners? Compensation issues would be addressed well after the ACW.
Leftyhunter

We all know why, not all males were people. Never forget cornerstone of the confederacy. It was the millstone around their neck and the millstone around the neck of their modern advocates.

 

[major bill]

So, emancipate a few hundred thousand and keep 3 million-plus enslaved? That doesn't sound like he was sacrificing the institution of slavery.

Yet the law passed by the Confederate congress did not offer freedom to slave who fought as soldiers. The law specific said that blacks serving as armed soldiers would not have their status changed. These are the facts and the Confederate nation had no intention of offering freedom to slaves who served as soldiers.

 

[major bill]

Yet the law passed by the Confederate congress did not offer freedom to slave who fought as soldiers. The law specific said that blacks serving as armed soldiers would not have their status changed. These are the facts and even with the War facing an end the Confederate nation had no intention of offering freedom to slaves who served as soldiers.

 

[unionblue]

From the standpoint of the US, the CSA was "illegal," but other nations are not held to that judgement.

De Facto

"In fact, or in effect, whether by right or not."

Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words

The world's leading online dictionary: English definitions, synonyms, word origins, example sentences, word games, and more. A trusted authority for 25+ years!

www.lexico.com

International Court of Justice Glossary:
De facto - in fact, or in effect, whether by right or not. Anything considered "de facto" should be treated as truth or law, not to be argued against. For example, if a country has been divided "de facto" then that means that are officially considered two nations.

http://www.kyymca.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Glossary-of-Terms_-ICJ-KUNA-Resources.pdf

You're playing "guess which shell the pea is under," shifting all these sources from one idea to another that STILL does not admit to the historical fact the Confederacy was never recognized by ANY nation as a legal, sovereign, government.

They had to win that right on the battlefield and they failed.

They did come close at one point. Read the book, Union In Peril: The Crisis Over British Intervention in the Civil War, by Howard Jones.

From the book's back cover: "The Lincoln administration feared that Great Britain would officially recognize the Confederacy during the Civil War, thereby granting legitimacy to secession and undermining the U.S. Constitution. What did happen, and why, is brilliantly described by Howard Jones in (the book).

Point-of-fact: De facto is not anywhere close to being officially recognized as a legitimate, legal, sovereign nation.

Not an opinion, just historical fact.

Unionblue

 

[unionblue]

There is also a book I bought last year that touches on this, and the broader late-war slavery issue.

View attachment 385624

Basically, by about September 1864, Jefferson Davis was about whole-hog ready to form something akin to a CSCT. Cleburne's Memorandum may have triggered it. Davis towards the end was already spurring debate with Southern newspapers for the possibility of arming slaves, with possibility of emancipation as compensation, literally sacrificing slavery in order to win. Win at all costs. A desperate Hail Mary. Many in Virginia were touting the idea, and with that touted a more Nationalistic Confederate/Southern mindset, which you can say persists today.

One should also read the book, The Gray And The Black: The Confederate Debate On Emancipation, by Robert F. Durden.

It's chock full of period newspaper editorials views on the idea of arming slaves and freeing them for serving the Confederacy as soldiers. An eye-opener on just how firmly the idea of slavery was entrenched in the Confederate mindset.

Unionblue

 

[Copperhead-mi]

From the standpoint of the US, the CSA was "illegal," but other nations are not held to that judgement.

De Facto

"In fact, or in effect, whether by right or not."

Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words

The world's leading online dictionary: English definitions, synonyms, word origins, example sentences, word games, and more. A trusted authority for 25+ years!

www.lexico.com

International Court of Justice Glossary:
De facto - in fact, or in effect, whether by right or not. Anything considered "de facto" should be treated as truth or law, not to be argued against. For example, if a country has been divided "de facto" then that means that are officially considered two nations.

http://www.kyymca.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Glossary-of-Terms_-ICJ-KUNA-Resources.pdf

My bold:
"There is no rule of international law which forbids secession from an existing state; nor is there any rule which forbids the mother-state to crush the secessionary movement, if it can. Whatever the outcome of the struggle, it will be accepted as legal in the eyes of international law. But, so long as the mother-state is still struggling to crush the secessionary movement, it cannot be said that the secessionary authorities are strong enough to maintain control over their territory with any certainty of permanence. Traditionally, therefore, states refrained from recognizing the secessionary movement as an independent state until its victory was assured; for instance, no country recognized the independence of the southern states during the American civil war (1861-5)."
Akehurst, Michael, A Modern Introduction to International Law, pp. 53-54.

 

[uaskme]

Why didn't Davis advocate mandatory military service for all fit males and the abolishment of slavery and full equal rights for all Southeners? Compensation issues would be addressed well after the ACW.
Leftyhunter

The Moralistic Yankee Slaveowners were compensated for Emancipation.

The whole Yankee Economy was built on the Slave Trade and the Plantation Economies around the World.

Of Course we don't like to talk about that.

 

[leftyhunter]

The Moralistic Yankee Slaveowners were compensated for Emancipation.

The whole Yankee Economy was built on the Slave Trade and the Plantation Economies around the World.

Of Course we don't like to talk about that.

Not true on your first point other then Washington DC no other slave owners were compensated.
Yes some sectors of the US economy benefited from slavery but then slavery ended.
No one denied that slavery exisited outside the South but many states abolished slavery long before the ACW.
Leftyhunter

 

[uaskme]

Not true on your first point other then Washington DC no other slave owners were compensated.
Yes some sectors of the US economy benefited from slavery but then slavery ended.
No one denied that slavery exisited outside the South but many states abolished slavery long before the ACW.
Leftyhunter

Ridiculous. North had a slow gradual emancipation. Males were emancipated at 21 or so. Well past many years of productivity. NY and NJ kept slave children in slavery until 21 or so. PAID slave owners for clothing and food expenses, giggle, until emancipation. And the biggest gift to the slave owners, many sold them south instead of Emancipating them. Guess they Colonized them?

 

[atlantis]

Since the supreme war aim was survival of the confederacy the question was how to achieve that aim. The introduction of conscription ended any hope for independence. Conscription was a defacto admission that the south was far from united and that support for the confederacy was a mile wide an a inch deep. The Mexican war was a big influence on confederate thinking but the confederates didn't realize this time they were the Mexicans. In other words the weaker party can not fight the same way as the stronger party.

 

[unionblue]

Ridiculous. North had a slow gradual emancipation. Males were emancipated at 21 or so. Well past many years of productivity. NY and NJ kept slave children in slavery until 21 or so. PAID slave owners for clothing and food expenses, giggle, until emancipation. And the biggest gift to the slave owners, many sold them south instead of Emancipating them. Guess they Colonized them?

All of the above is true (except the ridiculous comment).

The North did have a slow, gradual emancipation. The South did not.

Males were emancipated at 21 or so in the North. The South had state laws on the books preventing emancipation at any age.

NY and NJ did keep slave children until they had reached a certain age. SC and VA kept slave children in slavery forever.

In the North (it is said), some slave owners were paid for clothing and food expenses until emancipation. Would like to see some sources for these payments, but am willing to assume there were such instances in some Northern states. In the South, no slave owner was compensated for their slaves clothing or food, but then again, why should they be? They weren't in the process of emancipating ANY of their slaves, were they?

And finally, it is true some slave owners from the North did sell their slaves South in order to avoid freeing them for emancipation.
Lucky thing for them, there was a ready and nearby market for their slaves in the South.

 

[uaskme]

All of the above is true (except the ridiculous comment).

The North did have a slow, gradual emancipation. The South did not.

Males were emancipated at 21 or so in the North. The South had state laws on the books preventing emancipation at any age.

NY and NJ did keep slave children until they had reached a certain age. SC and VA kept slave children in slavery forever.

In the North (it is said), some slave owners were paid for clothing and food expenses until emancipation. Would like to see some sources for these payments, but am willing to assume there were such instances in some Northern states. In the South, no slave owner was compensated for their slaves clothing or food, but then again, why should they be? They weren't in the process of emancipating ANY of their slaves, were they?

And finally, it is true some slave owners from the North did sell their slaves South in order to avoid freeing them for emancipation.
Lucky thing for them, there was a ready and nearby market for their slaves in the South.

Lucky for them? You mean the White Yankee, I guess?