If there is one thing unreconstructed Southerners love to do it is to refight the Civil War (War of Northern Aggression for them). Defending the Lost Cause myth, they often sound as Germans claiming they were backstabbed at home in World War I. Dr. David Williams, an award-winning historian at Valdosta State University, takes square aim at the myth. He discusses in a 2013 paper how many Southerners rebelled against the Confederacy, often calling it a "rich man's war, a poor man's fight." Dr. Williams asserts:
In 1863, as battles raged on distant fields, a newspaper editor in the central Georgia town of Milledgeville was more concerned about the war at home. In an essay discussing the many ways in which Southerners were working against the Confederacy, the editor wrote: “We are fighting each other harder than we ever fought the enemy.”....
Between 1861 and 1865, the South was torn apart by a violent inner civil war, a war no less significant to the Confederacy’s fate than its more widely known struggle against the Yankees.
From its beginnings the Confederacy suffered from a rising tide of intense domestic hostility, not only among Southern blacks but increasingly among Southern whites. Ironically, it was a hostility brought on largely by those most responsible for the Confederacy’s creation. Planters excused themselves from the draft in various ways, then grew far too much cotton and tobacco, and not nearly enough food. Soldiers went hungry, as did their families back home. Women defied Confederate authorities by staging food riots from Richmond, Virginia, to Galveston, Texas. Soldiers deserted by the tens of thousands, and draft evasion became commonplace. By 1864, the draft law was practically impossible to enforce and two-thirds of the Confederate army was absent with or without leave. Many deserters and draft dodgers formed armed bands that controlled vast areas of the Southern countryside. Wartime disaffection among Southerners had solid roots in the early secession crisis. Most white Southerners, three-fourths of whom owned no slaves, made it clear in the winter 1860-61 elections for state convention delegates that they opposed immediate secession. Nevertheless, state conventions across the South, all of them dominated by slaveholders, ultimately ignored majority will and took their states out of the Union. A staunch South Carolina secessionist admitted the same. “But,” he asked, “whoever waited for the common people when a great move was to be made—we must make the move and force them to follow.”... In the spring of 1862, a southwest Georgia man wrote to Governor Joe Brown about planters growing too much cotton, begging him to “stop those internal enemies of the country, for they will whip us sooner than all Lincolndom combined could do it.” Thousands of planters and merchants defied the Confederacy’s cotton export policy and smuggled it out by the ton. Most states passed laws limiting production of non-food items, but enforcement was lax. With prices on the rise, cotton producers and dealers were getting richer than ever. Some bragged openly that the longer the war went on the more money they made. The inevitable result of cotton and tobacco over-production was a severe food shortage that hit soldiers’ families especially hard. With their husbands and fathers at the front and impressment officers confiscating what little food they had, it was difficult for soldiers’ wives to provide for themselves and their children. Planters had promised to keep soldiers’ families fed, but they never grew enough food to meet the need. Much of what food they did produce was sold to speculators, who hoarded it or priced it far beyond the reach of most ordinary people. (KF: Shades of what happened to Germany in the Great War. Britain ensured the farms had enough workers to ensure the crops were harvested while the idiot Germans drafted all farm workers into the army. Blockade plus worker shortage meant starvation for the army and country. ) In an open letter to the Savannah Morning News, one enraged Georgian was sure where the blame lay: “The crime is with the planters . . . as a class, they have yielded their patriotism, if they ever had any, to covetousness . . . for the sake of money, they are pursuing a course to destroy or demoralize our army—to starve out the other class dependent on them for provisions.” Desertion became so serious by the summer of 1863 that Jefferson Davis begged absentees to return. If only they would, he insisted, the Confederacy could match Union armies man for man. But they did not return......
There was also a bit of draft-dodging that did not sit too well with the populace:
In April 1862 the Confederate Congress passed the first general conscription act in American history. But men of wealth could avoid the draft by hiring a substitute or paying an exemption fee. For planters, Congress also exempted one white male of draft age for every twenty slaves owned. This twenty slave law was the most widely hated act ever imposed by the Confederacy. Said Private Sam Watkins of Tennessee, “It gave us the blues; we wanted twenty negroes. Negro property suddenly became very valuable, and there was raised the howl of ‘rich man’s war, poor man’s fight.’”
Mississippi was not immune from acts of rebellion against the Rebels. While the story of the Free State of Jones County is well known, similar acts took place in other counties as well:
Bands of deserters also ranged over southern Mississippi’s Simpson County. When the sheriff arrested several of them, their friends broke them out of jail. That entire area of Mississippi was, in fact, largely controlled by deserters and resisters who killed or drove off anyone connected with the Confederacy. In spring 1864 Major James Hamilton, quartermaster for taxation in Mississippi, wrote to his superiors that in the state’s Seventh District, covering most of southern Mississippi, deserters had “overrun and taken possession of the country.” Hamilton’s agent in Jones County had been driven off, and Hamilton had heard nothing more from him. In Covington County, deserters made the tax collector cease operations and distribute what he had on hand to their families. Deserters raided the quartermaster depot in Perry County and destroyed the stores there. Under the circumstances, Hamilton could no longer continue tax collections in that region.
The Confederate Civil War was one of class warfare:
Though their motives were not always the same, the one thing nearly all armed resisters had in common was that they were men of modest means. In eastern Tennessee, for example, Unionist guerillas were mainly small farmers, artisans, and laborers. By contrast, their pro-Confederate counterparts held three times as much real estate and twice as much personal property.
What a surprise. Mr. Williams wraps up his paper with a recounting of how slaves rebelled against their master. Many escaped to fight for the Union while others helped the Union forces as guides as happened in the Vicksburg campaign. Slave rebellions took place even in Mississippi:
In Choctaw County, Mississippi, slaves turned the tables on their owner, subjecting him to five hundred lashes.... After Mississippi slaveholder Jim Rankin returned from the army “meaner than before,” as one freedman told it, a slave “sneaked up in the darkness and shot him three times.” Rankin lingered in agony the rest of the night before he died the next morning. “He never knowed who done it,” the freedman recalled. “I was glad they shot him down.
Gee, it's almost as if they learned nothing from the French Revolution or the Revolution in San Domingo.
44 comments:
You are really a dumb loathsome troll doll looking little smurfette, Jamie!
The only good thing about the confederacy was it's lack of pretense when it came to it's dedication to the lowest principles of humanity. It wasn't fair and it didn't pretend it would be. The pretense came later. It was built on discrimination and subjugation and dedicated to it's preservation. They said it and they did it. There were some poor whites who understood this, but many were too brainwashed to resist and it was they not the rich who paid the price. All this was ignored when the same rich masters who invented the hellish nation wrote the glorious history of it's struggle and it's demise.
Did not read any of it, but I concur. All wars are "rich man" wars, but the CW was the ultimate. Poor uneducated whites fighting to keep slavery, which not only didn't benefit them, but kept their wages down. It was un-winnable from the start and Lee and Davis should be held in disdain for sending so many poor people to their death, while rich slave owners and their sons stayed home. Before anyone chimes in with, "it wasn't about slavery," go read MS's articles of succession, then come back.
It was the war where the north invaded America
Someone posted a positive comment about Gen. Stonewall Jackson and the spiritual yankee and cultural Marxist KF copy pastes this drivel from his latest Gemini search 😂
a revisionist professor doing what they do
Don’t you mean Sherman and Grant?
Slavery was wrong and headed for its rightful end, but history seems to ignore that slavery existed under the United States flag far, far longer than it ever existed under the Confederate flag. What happened was the Confederacy dragged its feet on the matter, and wrongly so, but history unfairly rewarded it with the full burden of being the only faction culpable for slavery.
You can’t listen to a good biography about Stonewall Jackson and not have respect for the man. Even if you have nothing but contempt for slavery and the CSA. SC Gwynne has written the best one so far with Rebel Yell https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/rebel-yell-the-violence-passion-and-redemption-of-stonewall-jackson/218593
Hey 7:28pm, I was going to post the same thing about the State Of MS Articles of Secession. Interesting read for those who say it was not about slavery.
Thank goodness the Republican-led Union defeated the Democrat-led Confederacy and abolished slavery.
For all you damn yankees:
Starting as New Amsterdam, NYC had slave markets from the 1600s up until 1762, even on Wall Street. At one point in mid 1700s, 40% of NYC dwellers had slaves.
8:15, Aren't you the same guy who said he never met a mean or violent klansman?
This is a great story, KF. Thanks for posting it. I had no idea so many southerners refused to fight to preserve slavery, or how badly those who did fight were sold out by the same people who started the war.
Sherman, Grant, and Jackson the Stone Wall.
What a disaster the sins of slavery led to. The policy“for every plantation with 20 or more enslaved people, one white man was exempted from military service (typically an overseer or owner’s son)”…..while poor men owning no slaves fought and died for the rich man’s cause, tells us how manipulatable and ignorant human beings can be.
Kind of like todays Democrat play book of using crime as a tactic to control cities like Jackson, MS forever, while the poor people that live with the consequences, including dead children, are too manipulated and ignorant to stop supporting pro-crime pro-criminal Democrats.
And all with so much help from White Democrats, like Sid’s Yellow Dogs, “the most dangerous thing in the entire Western Hemisphere”…..that Malcom X warned us about.
The South never had the resources ...men, money, or ammunition... to win the Civil War. Only 2 of my ancestors survived. One was wounded at Petersburg and the barely made it alive out of Point Lookout prison which was every bit as awful as Andersonville. The other survivor was 12 years old and his mother , after losing all his older brothers to the war, hid her last son in the well when the last ditch efforts find recruits road onto her property. The Confederacy was so short on troops at the end that elected state officials were raiding towns, plantations, and farms in NC and VA to find males to send to war. The South's only hope ever was to hang on long enough for the Northerners to tire of war. It ends up being MATH instead of who had the best Generals and bravest troops. It was always a LOST CAUSE.
Even better, read the "Cornerstone" Speech, by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the "Confederate States of America", delivered in early 1861. That speech makes very clear the real reason for secession.
You obviously don't know that it was Beauregard, a Southern artillery officer, who fired the very first shots of the Civil War, when he opened fire on Fort Sumpter.
Dude! The "North" WAS the United States of America. And the USA won the civil war.
Telling true history.
My great great grandfather survived 19 battles enlisted in 1863 captured in 1864 paroled re enlisted captured again in 1865. Sent to ship island released in June 1865. My family never owned not one slave. I often wondered why he was fighting!
I think a lot of these guys were fighting because they had pride in their state and then social pressure. Also they were afraid that free blacks would take control of government.
Only a dunderhead would correlate secession with war. The Confederate States had no desire for nor intention of war. Lincoln started his unnecessary war when he chose to invade the separate nation of The Confederate States of America.
If the Mississippi Articles of Secession had included a clause stating secession is, in part, based on the fact of a flat earth, a dunderhead would conclude that 'the flat earth theory started the war'.
If Lee had listened to Longstreet after the first day at Gettysburg the Union would have lost that battle. There would likely have been a bargained peace deal after that.
It's still the same, my friend, although the percentage may be different. The difference is that the indentured are not being brought over on a boat, they're coming over the border under their own power. They call them undocumented.
Lee was terrible. As terrible as Beauregard. Most of the Union Generals were somehow worse while also corrupt! No doubt that Jackson was a tactical genius. Had he and Longstreet both been at Gettysburg, the war would’ve likely ended that day with an armistice and then peace.
It is all part of our history. It should not be forgotten. Now I’m going to go rewatch Gods and Generals
We are all equally slaves to debt and taxation. Only the chosen oligarchy is not.
The North simply had to keep fighting and the South would have run into the same problem Germany did in WW1. Given the rise of good generals in the Union such as Grant and Sherman, the South's advantage in leadership was disappearing.
If the South somehow wins, it becomes a vassal or economic colony. It was not industrialized. The planters did not want industrialization. The South would have fallen further behind the North. Agricultural countries usually can't compete with industrialized ones.
There is also the matter of slaves. The slave population in some, if not all states, outnumbered the white population. If the war ends, abolitionists would not have lay down their arms but probably instead start training and arming blacks to start more slave rebellions.
6:47 for today's real winner!
"The Confederate States had no desire for nor intention of war."
And you know this how?
"Rich man's war, poor man's fight" is usually used to mean that the rich wage a war while avoiding service. But during the Civil War, slaveowners were more likely to fight than non-slaveowners. See "Wealth, Slave Ownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy" by Hall (2019).
Horseshit! Put the gin bottle away.
It came to me in a dream with Max Headroom and Col. Sanders.
I don't have opinion on the reason(s) for the Civil War. They are many in number and depend on who you are talking to and where they are from. I do, however, take with some points in O Boy's article. I acutally had to write a paper about the opposing forces of the North and South. The south did indeed have numerous areas/people who refused to fight for the CSA (for a myriad of reasons). Howerver, the South was not alone. The North experienced numerous large scale riots in major cities, New York actually threatened seccession. There were far more deserters from Northern armies, and based on the population of both sections, a far higher percentage fought for the South than the North. Agents of the Federal govenment actually met ships docking with immigrants (mainly Irish and German) and tricked them into signing enlistment papers. Just a few points.
@8:33 AND 9:26 The big difference is that the United States although once tolerating slavery never incorporated it into it's constitution which the Confederacy specifically did. In fact the Confederacy made it THE cornerstone of it's existence since it adopted the U.S. constitution almost exactly except for it's preservation of slavery.
in most wars throughout history the men who did the bleeding did not really know what they were fighting for. They thought they knew but they really didn't. Just as well, because if they did know they probably would have quit.
@4:55
now when they figure it out, the un-alive themselves. The VA still hasn’t figured out how to deal with epidemic of the vets who have been figuring out for the last 25 years.
Man
I knew this article would trigger the libs.
How difficult is it to understand that Sumpter was in The Confederate States of America. Lincoln, against three warnings, decided to invade a Southern state. Obviously an act of war.
The Real Question: What were the north's motives for invading the South?
Leftist trolls and other shallow critics obsess over the Confederacy's motives for secession, endlessly blaming the South and reducing everything down to a defense of slavery. Notice how they never ask the more important question: What was Lincoln's motive for invading?
5:59 a.m., Lincoln's primary motive was stop the illegal secession of the confederate states from the United States, which the confederate states did to preserve slavery.
No matter how much people like try to talk and reason it into a different story, it really is that simple.
And BTW, not everyone who disagrees with your BS is a "lib." I realize you think you're smart, but that doesn't make everyone else stupid.
Because they never started or prompted war...for starters.
When discussing the causes of any war, we should focus on the attacker's intentions, not the defender's. Claiming Lincoln's Unnecessary War was caused by the South defending slavery is as absurd as saying World War II was caused by Poland resisting Germany's invasion.
With the exception of trolls, revisionists, and hand-wringing white-guilters, the rest of us, if interested, have read hundreds of battle-field letters back home and deathbed accounts.
If the boys in blue were engaged in fighting the demon of slavery, if they signed up and marched south in order to free the darkies and rest the coloreds from lives of captivity, where are all the letters back home or journals and writ-memories attesting to that? Let me tell you why. It's because not a single man or boy in blue gave one whit about slavery, where it existed, including the man back home in the stove-pipe hat.
Whatta you expect? Northern boys were told to suit up and head South in order to save the union and there was a good chance they would never return. They didn't give a whit about 'the union' and had no idea where 'the South' was.
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