Heritage
Ah how touching – they’re celebrating “Confederate Memorial Day” in selected Southern states.
State government offices are closed today in Mississippi and Alabama for Confederate Memorial Day.
Georgia on the other hand renamed it “State Holiday” in 2015 after the slaughter in Charleston.
In some parts of the South, the debate has prompted a counter-effort to honor Southern heritage and preserve symbols of the Confederacy.
A Georgia lawmaker tried to revive Confederate Memorial Day in name in 2017. The proposal, which did not gain traction, made no direct reference to slavery or the Civil War. But it sought to recognize the “four-year struggle for states’ rights, individual freedom and local government control.”
“Southern heritage”=slavery. That’s it. There is no grand other Thing that was wholly separate from slavery that is “Southern heritage.” The South had some people who got very rich growing cotton, and not much else. It was an impoverished backwater with bad schools and worse universities. The “heritage” thing is a heritage of dominance and exploitation. Walk away.
What Alabama wrote, upon leaving the Union:
“[T]he election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions – nothing less than an open declaration of war – for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans.”
Hey,what’s the problem? There’s great, terrific heritage on both sides.
Don’t forget the River of Blood http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/the-river-of-blood-just-off-the-15th-tee/
States’ rights to do… what, again?
And which individuals’ freedom, is it?
How about ‘Pellagra Day?’
How many of these boxes can you check?
____White
____Male
____Christian
The number of boxes you can check determines the level of freedom to which you are entitled.
iknklast: you forgot a box:
_____Wealthy
“Poor white trash” might tick off all three of the above boxes but miss out on this fourth one. Whites might not ever run the risk of becoming slaves, but there was always the fate of becoming poor white trash.
From Wikipedia:
“Restricted from holding political office due to property qualifications, their ability to vote at the mercy of the courts which were controlled by the slave-holding planters, poor whites had few advocates within the political system or the dominant social hierarchy. Although many were tenant farmers or day laborers, other white trash people were forced to live as scavengers, thieves and vagrants, but all, employed or not, were socially ostracized by “proper” white society by being forced to use the back door when entering “proper” homes. Even slaves looked down on them: when poor whites came begging for food, the slaves called them “stray goats.”[13]
…………………….
During the Civil War, the Confederacy instituted conscription to raise soldiers for its army, with all men between the ages of 18 and 35 being eligible to be drafted – later expanded to all men between 17 and 50. However, exemptions were numerous, including any slave-owner with more than 20 slaves, political officeholders, teachers, ministers and clerks, and men who worked in valuable trades. Left to be drafted, or to serve as paid substitutes, were poor white trash Southerners, who were looked down on as cannon fodder. Conscripts who failed to report for duty were hunted down by so-called “dog catchers”. Poor southerners said that it was a “rich man’s war”, but “a poor man’s fight.” While upper-class Southern “cavalier” officers were granted frequent furloughs to return home, this was not the case with the ordinary private soldier, which led to an extremely high rate of desertion among this group, who put their families well-being above the cause of the Confederacy, and thought of themselves as “Conditional Confederates.” Deserters harassed soldiers, raided farms and stole food, and sometimes banded together in settlements, such as the “Free State of Jones”(formerly Jones County) in Mississippi; desertion was openly joked about. When found, deserters could be executed, or humiliated by being put into chains.[24]
Despite the war being fought to protect the right of the patrician elite of the South to own slaves, the planter class was reluctant to give up their cash crop, cotton, to grow the corn and grain needed by the Confedeate armies and the civilian population. As a result, food shortages, exacerbated by inflation and hoarding of foodstuffs by the rich, caused the poor of the South to suffer greatly. This led to food riots of angry mobs of poor women, who raided stores, warehouses and depots looking for sustenance for their families. Both the male deserters and the female rioters put the lie to the myth of Confederate unity, and that the war was being fought for the rights of all white Southerners.[25]
YNnB – so right. And as someone who grew up poor white trash, I should not have forgotten that box! (Maybe it was the sense of aggrieved entitlement of all my male relatives who blamed every bad thing in their lives on blacks, women, and black women that kept me from seeing that; they really do act pretty much like the middle class white Christian males in so many ways except they have less stuff).
YNnB @6
Very interesting indeed, that’s very different from Hollywood’s version of the tragedy. It’s amazing that the Confederacy lasted as long as it did, perhaps that was due to the incompetence of Union generals.
Goodness, I hope you’re not getting your ideas of the South and slavery from Hollywood.
My favorite bit about the Civil War is an incident involving plantation owner and slavery defender James Henry Hammond. He advocated the “mudsill theory” of society, that an upper crust of high civilization had to be supported by the miseries of much of the population, like the mudsill of a house.
But when the Confederate Army requisitioned crops from him, he objected that it was like “branding on my forehead: SLAVE”.
He was not alone. Some Confederate leaders, like vice president Alexander Stephens, opposed the Confederate Army’s draft as involuntary servitude and a violation of states’ rights.
Confederate apologists like to picture Southerners as united to repel hostile invaders, but that is grossly unhistorical. The Confederacy even had some defecting regions of people who did not own many slaves. West Virginia succeeded in seceding from Virginia and becoming a separate state, though eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama failed — the Confederacy stationed troops there to keep them from doing so.
@9
Definitely not Ophelia, I’m shocked that you would think that I’m so naive. I’m just a little sceptical of Hollywood’s version of international relations as well. You know, when Americans tell dopey foreigners how to run their country properly.
Hollywood is a marvellous invention, it must be the only time in history when the targets of propaganda actually pay for it themselves, apparently that includes Americans.
The US Civil War is a fascinating subject for a citizen of a nation where political and social violence has been negligible. ( Except for the war against the Indigenous people of course).