Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Let's say you're redoing the Civil War and you get to play one of two characters: Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis.
Would it actually be easy to win the war playing as Jefferson Davis?
Obviously, the South would never have been able to conquer the North. The North had immense economic, technological, naval, and manpower advantages. But they didn't need to. They just need to impose enough of a cost on the North that the North would come to a settlement. This doesn't appear that far-fetched. The re-election of Abraham Lincoln was no sure thing in 1864. Had the war not turned decisively in favor of the Union, its possible that McClellan could have won. In the end, he still captured 45% of the votes and won three states (NJ, DE, KY). If McClellan prosecuted the war as President like he did as a General, its likely the South could have held out for a long time. Situations like the starvation of Union prisoners in Andersonville, and the sheer awfulness of the conflict would have likely have proven intolerable without a sure path to victory.
So what could the South have done?
Fabian tactics. They should have simply refused to give battle whenever possible, and harassed Union communications. Johnston did just that as he retreated in the face of Sherman's army. But then he was replaced by the Confederate government because they preferred someone who wanted to fight. Then Sherman took Atlanta.
Lee's incursion into Pennsylvania was a fatal mistake that did more to weaken the Confederate cause than anything. He may have been a good tactician but this strategic blunder is unforgivable.
But the real weak point here is Jefferson Davis. He often involved himself in military decisions and wanted commanders who took an aggressive posture. While appropriate for a stronger force, this is entirely inappropriate for a weaker one. Confederate doctrine should have been preservation of precious manpower, avoiding giving battle, never fighting when not intrenched etc... That last part is also key since the Civil War showed some signs of a proto-WWI type environment.
In any case, in hindsight, the war seems eminently winnable for the South. Which character would you play: Lincoln or Davis?
I think the more interesting question is: the North won the war and you play as Andrew Johnson. What do you do so that 130 years later people no longer identify with the cause of the South?
Do people really identify with the cause of the South now? The Confederacy fought for a very specific slave based political economy. That economy was destroyed by the war and never came back. All political fights in the US are within the political-economic universe created by the victorious Union.
I consider modern people who use Confederate imagery as similar to Ukrainians who dress up like the Nazis; they are appropriating the dress and iconography of a previous movement despite not advocating for that goals of that previous movement.
I've met at least one guy younger than me who was like "yea I'd fight for the Confederacy." It wasn't a pro-slavery stance, it was essentially regional patriotism.
You've got to understand that a lot of the people who fought for the South didn't fight for slavery in the sense that they did not stand to benefit by it and had little or zero economic investment in it. Like, plenty of poor people who basically did not benefit from slavery at all still fought for the South because they were invaded by a hostile foreign power. And by 1860, the culture war over slavery had grown beyond slavery in the sense that it had become about whether slavery was right or wrong or should be legal or illegal, but about a clash of cultures and ways of living. (You can see this in today's culture war as well, arguments as soldiers and all of that.)
And in the South, moreso than most other parts of the United States, those people didn't go anywhere, they had kids and grandkids and those great-grandkids still live there and still have an emotional attachment to their ancestors (who fought bravely despite very long odds and were defeated) and their land (which was economically devastated by the war) and their culture (which has been mocked in popular culture ever since). So (despite your assertion about political fights in the US today) the differences in the cultures and ways of living never really went away. Many, perhaps most people in the South, are still regionalized patriots. I think (particularly in the past) people were likely to display a Confederate flag similar to how someone in Texas might display the Texas flag instead of the United States flag. (Not that I would suggest there was zero correlation between wearing the Confederate flag and certain beliefs about race...!)
Perhaps the best way I might explain this to someone who is either too close or too far from the question to understand it might be: imagine a patriotic Englishman who strongly supported the Saxons at Hastings (I suspect a pretty common position) despite modern England being fundamentally a Norman invention.
This is not Confederate apologia, by the by, I'm just trying to explain something to you. Happy to elaborate to the best of my ability.
One thing I don't understand is that, at some point not too long ago, Confederate apologia was relatively common in the North. I mean, for Pete's sake, a Canadian band wrote a sympathetic song about the South, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
Now the common take is that the south was evil, no good, they sucked in every way, etc... The Dixie Chicks are just the Chicks. Lady Antebellum is Lady A.
What changed?
Its not what we would normally expect. In the 1920s I would expect the antebellum South to be the outgroup. In the 2020s, they are the fargroup. You would typically expect hatred to lessen as the conflict becomes a distant memory. Instead, it has increased.
Regardless, I thank God for the defiant oppostionalism of the Borderers. They guard my right flank. Without them, the leftist hate mob would be after me.
I think it was Dylan Roof shooting up a black church while wearing Confederate and Rhodesian flag patches. It was pretty soon after that, that Amazon and such stopped selling Confederate flag merchandise, and streets and schools started getting renamed.
Literally who?
I don't doubt the chronology, but the stage has to be set ideologically. The spark didn't really cause the fire, it was inevitable with enough dry timber. If Dylan Roof, who I honestly don't remember, had never existed do you think that the schools wouldn't have been renamed? Of course they would have. And if a Dylan Roof didn't exist it would have been necessary to invent him. Like we have now with the lynching hoaxes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link