Nice post Kevin. As a southerner by birth and choice I, too, fail to see the attraction of the Confederacy.

That said, I will risk confirming your suspicions of my ignorance by asking, who is David Carouso?

Dwight

David Carusso was the original star of NYPD. he left the show after a season, to do movies. The movies did not do well at all.

And thanks.

Ah, the red headed guy. You must be right about his movie career as I have not seen him in about a decade.

To believe that the war was about slavery is not to understand the times.

Very few southerners owned slaves.

The Emmancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the south. It was several years before slaves in other states were freed.

The Proclamation also allowed blacks into the Union army for the first time. Blacks were already fighting for the south. In particular, the southern navy had a large contingent of blacks.

The north was bleeding the south dry, economically. Laws forbid southern plantation owners from sending raw materials to England to be processed - they were forced to send them to the factories in the north at outrageously low prices.

Yes, slavery was a factor, perhaps even one of the major ones. But there were many factors and more than anything the war was about economics, as so many things are.

I highly recommend "The Causes of the Civel War" by Kenneth Stampp. It consists entirely of speeches, essays, editorials, and newspaper articles from the years preceding, during, and immediately after the war.

I'm a Civil War buff and I too don't get why such a large number of Southerners have the Confederacy fetish. I understand the bigots who long for the days when the "darkies" knew their place (hi, Trent Lott), but with the sane ones I don't get. I guess it's nostalgia for the "lost cause" and romanticizing the past.

And David Caruso's career isn't totally dead. He does have "CSI:Miami" now.

I'm sorry, AlphaPatriot, but to deny slavery as the main cause of the Civil War is to be ignorant. It is true that there were other causes to the war, but slavery was the one issue that poisoned all others. All the other disagreements between North and South could be settled peacebly, but slavery was the one that could not be settled by any way except war. Slavery was the root cause of the war and to deny it reeks of Confederate apologists who don't like to admit that their ancestors fought for an evil cause.

And don't pull that "blacks served in the Confederate army" crap on me. True, there were a few blacks who served in the Confederate army, but typically only as home guards, for the Confederacy feared arming their slaves. The Confederacy only authorized slaves a month before the war ended as a last ditch effort, after a furious debate that lasted for years. None saw action. Compare that to the nearly 200,000 black soldiers who served in the Union army. The notion of slaves cheerfully serving their Confederate masters in war by digging trenches and serving in the millitary is so much "Gone With The Wind" type revisionist crap.

AlphaPatriot was probably raised and educated in the South. I was also taught that the Civil War was not about slavery. Fortunately I had a chance to read breadth of material on the war in college and come to my own conclusions. And I happen to be in agreement with the popular concensus. That war had other issues going on, but it would not have come to bloodshed and actual treason had it not been that Southerners wanted to continue to profit from slavery. So yes, it was an economic issue. Free labor being "essential" to the competitive edge Southerners would have had selling their goods abroad without governmental policies interfering and European immigrant labor in the north not wanting to have to compete with slave wages for the same work being done in the south. It was an unsustanable situation. As was noted then, I nation cannot stand have slave and half free.

For Confederate flag wavers argument that they're just supporting their heritage, I respond that it isn't a very good heritage. True, most whites weren't slaveowners, but only because they lacked land & money. They supported and fought for slavery.
It's like people of German heritage flying the Nazi flag to support their heritage - except for Hitler and the little mistake with the Jews (most Germans didn't work at Auschwitz, after all), they've got a fine, proud heritage. Many of their soldiers fought and died nobly and heroically for their government.
Don't like Nazi comparisons? Pick another one - Stalin, Milosevic, whoever.

Once again, prejudice and ignorance seem to rule the day. Instead of looking at the facts, the primary source documents, we rely on our own preconceptions, formed by revisionist history and propaganda.

"That war had other issues going on, but it would not have come to bloodshed and actual treason had it not been that Southerners wanted to continue to profit from slavery. "

"They supported and fought for slavery."

"All the other disagreements between North and South could be settled peacebly, but slavery was the one that could not be settled by any way except war. Slavery was the root cause of the war and to deny it reeks of Confederate apologists who don't like to admit that their ancestors fought for an evil cause."

"The flag is the symbol of a nation dedicated to the proposition that slavery must continue (yes, the war was about slavery. There were other issues, but slavery brought blood to the table, and you have to really, really not want to see the truth to argue otherwise), segregationists in the 1950s and 1960s, and treason against the United States. I understand that there are people fond of those values, but why choose the Confederacy? I mean, they lost. They got their *sses kicked up and down the Continent by the Union Army and Jim Crow and slavery are deader than David Caruso's career. Why choose the symbol of a bunch of losers?"

Each of these statements, with the exception of the fact that the South lost the War, are demonstrably false, yet otherwise intelligent folks continue to spout them as if they made some kind of sense.

Forst and foremost, secession did not equal treason. A Union formed voluntarily can be dissolved voluntarily. This principle was recognized even by Abraham Lincoln, and there are quotes to prove it. In fact, the first secession threats came not from the South, but from Maine, who threatened to leave the Union over taxation. Additionally, if secession were treason at the time of the War, why then after the War did the Union pass a Constitutional amendment making secession illegal?

Second, read the letters of the men who fought for the South. From Robert E. Lee down to the lowest private, the evidence is overwhelming. These men fought, not to preserve slavery, but to preserve the Sovreignty of their States. Hell, Lee is famous for just that dichotomy. He was against secession in the first place. Also read the newspaper editorials from the Union. While Abolitionists raised a ruckus over slavery from the outset, most Northerners fought to preserve the Union, not free the slaves. It wasn't until after the second year of the war, when the North was reeling from several major defeats, that ending slavery became a rallying cry for the North. In fact, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was less a human rights declaration, and more an attempt to sow division in the South, trying to weaken their will be fomenting rebellion within. How else to explain the fact that the Proclamation only freed slaves in the territories which had seceded, leaving those in the Union still wearing chains?

Next, considering the advantages the North had in numbers, materiel, and technology, the fact that the South lasted for 4 years, inflicting tremendous damage on the Union troops puts lie to the notion that the South got their "asses kicked up and down the continent." (If you're going to cuss, cuss.)
Finally, while slavery was a proximate cause of the War, the root cause, the one that ties all the contributing factors together, tariffs, taxation, trade, and slavery, was the domination of the Federal government by the industrial north over the agrarian south.

The facts are clear if you read the source documents. Alpha Patriot gives a great place to start. Lincoln's Little War, by Garrison, and Shelby Foote's 3 volume series, The Civil War will get you started.

Sadly, the slavery issue was kind of thrown in the mix at the time. Hindsight being what it is, it is obviously the most important result.

Yep, the War ended slavery, but left us with an ever expanding and intrusive federal government, the end of State Sovereignty, and the perversion of several of the ideals that formed the basis for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, for example, the concept that civil rights are "inalienable." When Lincoln suspended habeus corpus, and threw publishers who dared criticize his war into jail without a trial, he repudiated the ideals he claimed he was fighting for. His actions formed the precedent for the Japanese internment, and the hated Patriot Act.

Given the fact that slavery was already dying out in the South, (Look it up. The Confederate Constitution banned the slave trade, the first American Constitution to do so.) the price for that victory was way too high.

OK, suppose the Civil War truly was primarily about States' rights. States' rights to do what? Apart from the right to slave ownership, what "rights" were the Southern states trying to preserve?

Oh, and if slavery was essentially a non-issue until two years into the war, then where the hell did the Missouri Compromise come from? Why was it so important to maintain a balance of slave/free states in the Senate if the slave states were getting rid of slavery anyway?

I'm afraid it's not just the northerners who are engaging in revisionist history...

Uhm, right to leave the union.

Right to engage in commerce with other countries.

Right to taxation with adequate representation.

There's more that the others can enlighten you to, but that's a start.

Don't be mistaken, i think the civil war provided more good than anything else. But it wasn't 100% nobel on either side.

When Lincoln suspended habeus corpus, and threw publishers who dared criticize his war into jail without a trial, he repudiated the ideals he claimed he was fighting for. His actions formed the precedent for the Japanese internment, and the hated Patriot Act.

Give me a break. Yes, Lincoln did those things, and yes, he was wrong to do so. But he was far from the first to do it. Also, I haven't researched the subject extensively, but I've never seen anyone use Lincoln's actions here as a basis for justification of their similar actions.

I actually support State Sovereignty to some extent, but historically, when it's been cited, it's been for really bad causes. Most frequently the state has wanted to preserve its "right" to discriminate. Witness the Southern backlash against civil rights legislation in the 50's and 60's, under the banner of "States' rights."

You want examples of states' rights that I do support? Oregon's euthanasia law; California's medical marijuana law; several states' Blaine amendments; these are just a few examples.

Speaking of the backlash against civil rights, that's essentially how the whole confederate flag revival started. When the federal government started passing civil rights laws that the Southern states didn't like, they re-adopted the symbols of the Confederacy (witness Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina). Those symbols had been mostly dead and buried until they were ressurrected as symbols of hate in the 50's.

So getting back to Kevin's original question, exactly what "heritage" is the Confederate flag supposed to represent? And why wouldn't another symbol, without all the hateful connotations, suffice?

SU

I never said that both sides were 100% noble. Leading up to the war, the North was complicitous in slavery by continuing to buy cheap southern goods made with slave labor.

Regarding taxation, what constitutes "adequate representation?" The South was equally represented in the Senate (actually, disproportionately represented, if you go by population). No new taxes could be passed without getting a majority in the Senate.

Regarding international trade, that's a state's right? Should a state be allowed to trade with nations that the federal government considers hostile or risky?

As for right to leave the Union, I'll agree with you on that one. They probably should have had that right, and in a way, I wish we would have let them. Then, after they went bankrupt and rejoined the union of their own volition, we'd be a happy, united country without all the war baggage. :)

what constitutes "adequate representation?"

Obviously they (and Maine) disagreed on that. Much like i do now with most folks. I am not adequately represented with respect to taxes. Special interests, pork projects and corporations are represented much more than me.

that's a state's right?

See amendment 10

The Civil war was about slavery. Slavery brought the war. Period.

First, the South should have won. The technology of the times dictated that its defensive tactics should have proven an overwhelming advantage in combat, and its man power shortage was offset in large part by slave labor. It was Southern miscalculation over King Cotton(not selling it when it had a chance) and its insistence on offensive operations that did the most to overcome that advantage.

Second, despite the fact that some people thought they were fighting for states rights, in practice, that meant they were fighting for the preservation of states to protect slavery. In the first half of the century, the issue that dominated politics was slavery. The admission of states was rigged to make sure the Senate state split between free and slave states. The Fugitive Slave Act was the widest expansion of federal power (with the possible exception of the LA. Purchase) the country had ever seen - hardly a states right position. The Dredd Scott case invalidated state laws to protect slavery, and it was widely hailed in the South. Again, hardly the position of a states rights person. The Democratic party did not split over the question of tariffs - it split over the question of expanding slavery. The South sent people to Nicaragua and Cuba in attempts to take over those nations and spread slavery - they were given support by Southern politicians and southern newspapers, in terms that explicitly tied the expansion of slavery to the survival of the South. The South did not secede until a President intent on limiting the expansion of slavery was elected. heck, the Southern political leaders and press referred to the Republicans as Black Republicans. if states rights was the cause, then why the lack of support for South Carolina during the nullification crisis? Only after slavery became the catalyst, did the South unite behind secession.

And lets look at some of those source documents. This is from the S.C secession:

"[A]n increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations. . .The non-slaveholding States have denounced as sinful the Institution of Slavery, they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes, and those who remain have been incited by emissaries books and pictures to servile insurrection... The public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate Extinction."

And from the Confederate Constitution

"The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same. "

And from the Confederate VP:
"Our new Government is founded upon exactly the
opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the
great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery,
subordination to the
superior race, is his natural and moral condition"

The prisoner exchanges were ended by the Confederacy because the North refused to countenance not having their black soldiers returned to them. The Confederacy was selling such soldiers into slavery, where they weren't executing them.

Finally, secession was not Constitutional, or, at least, was not clearly Constitutional.

Look, federalism may be a defensible position, but defending it using the Confederacy is morally repugnant. The plain and simple fact is that without the existence of slavery and a slave owning region of the nation, there would be no civil war.

The Civil war was about slavery. Slavery brought the war. Period.

Wrong. It was a factor but not the primary one.

I am not adequately represented with respect to taxes. Special interests, pork projects and corporations are represented much more than me.

Relevant now, but I'm not sure it was as relevant then. No fourteenth amendment to turn corporations into super-persons. And you still haven't indicated what does constitute "adequate representation."

See amendment 10

Err, okay:

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

I added the emphasis. Let's scroll up a bit in Mr. Constitution, shall we? How's about:

Article I, Section 8
The Congress shall have power ... To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

Oops. Fail to see how Amendment 10 applies here.

Regulation is not prohibition nor is it exclusionary.

"It was a factor but not the primary one"

Yes, it was. Without the defense of slavery, the South would not have seceded.

What is regulation, then, if not setting the parameters for what you can and cannot do?

When one of the cannot dos entirely consists of prohibiting engagement in the specified activity, that is abuse on the highest level.

Well, abuse of power is a different thing. You were arguing that the federal government didn't have the power, which it clearly did.

tgirsch, one of the most contentious issues prior to secession were the large tariffs northern industrialists had placed on imports to protect their base. Southern ports wanted to drop the tariffs and encourage free trade through their ports in Charleston and New Orleans. As for equal representation, check out the proportion of tax revenue which came from the South as compared to population distribution. The tax policies in the first half of the 1800s were building the Northern industrial complex at the cost of bleeding the South dry. Additionally, the federal government subsidized much of the nascent industries in the North, again short changing the South. This was a primary motivation for the South to try and develop their own international trade. It was clear to people of the time that the South was not considered an equal partner in the Union.

I do agree with you on one point though. Had the North allowed the South to secede, eventual reunification, or at least a strong alliance was almost a certainty, and there would have been no lingering bitterness from the War and Reconstruction.

Kevin,

"The south should have won"

You're kidding, right? You can't make up for a shortage of soldiers with slaves. It doesn't work that way. The North had superior weapons, more troops, better equipment, and more supplies. The South had better Generals and the will to fight.

As for the causes of secession, instead of reading War history, sheck out the sectional strains detailed in "Secessionists at Bay," or any othe work which concentrates on the years between 1780 and 1860. Secession became an issue even before the ink was dry on the Constitution.

rich

What you convinetely forget to mention is that, in the case fo tarrifs, Seccsion was offered but not taken by ayone other than SC during the Nullification controversy. you also do not address the very words of the Seccisonists themselves saying slavery was what they were defending.

And slavery did free up soldiers to fight, and the South had similiar weapsons and the weapons the North had did favor defensive tactics. In other words, the South was in a very strong position when the war began, but frittered away those advantages.