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[Max™]

I think a succession war would be the kids of Charles and Kate fighting each other.

[Culise]

what are the issues that prompted the civil war?

Wasn't the idea of a succession war on the table for a while before the Civil War? (wait succession? is that the right term?)

Yes, but as a consequence of slavery.  As noted, extensions of federal power to enforce "property rights" (the Southern dog-whistle of choice in the antebellum era) were perfectly permissible to the South, and those states' rights not pertaining to slavery were not a particular matter of concern to the South; an attempt to organize such a secession in the 1830s around tariffs drew at best lukewarm response from even most Deep South states.  This is not to say that they were the only ones; you can see states' rights being championed all over the North in response to Southern extensions of federal power.  Famously and with absolutely no sense of irony, the South Carolinian declaration of independence cited Northern nullification as one of the key drivers behind their desire to secede.  Pennsylvania had failed in a suit to nullify the original Fugitive Slave Act in 1842.  Wisconsin had unilaterally declared that the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was unconstitutional and passed a law stating that the US Supreme Court had no right to contradict this, a view which said Supreme Court obviously regarded with some disdain and thus overturned in 1859.  States' rights suddenly fell by the wayside when it came to the *North* abrogating Southern use of federal power. 

That's not to say the South did not have its own reasons for being concerned about the end of slavery.  You note that only 6% of the population of the South owned slaves (5.6% in 1850).  This is accurate, but highly misleading.  First of all, because this population includes children, dependents, and still-married wives who were less likely to own slaves directly or maintain households, it's better to compare it to households; if you do this, depending on state, you find that anywhere from 20% (AK) to 49% (MS) of the households own slaves.  As well, here's a non-specific list of people who may not be listed as owning slaves who were affected by slavery: overseers and managers, slave traders who bought and sold them, small landholders who rented slaves during the harvest or sowing seasons from major landowners, cotton or tobacco traders who shipped the goods raised by slaves to coastal ports, stevedores and dockhands who moved the goods, and anyone who aspired to owning at least one slave as a sign of prosperity.  Slavery was more important than to those who owned slaves themselves: slaves cleaned streets, moved goods at docks, and served in households as well as in fields.  The end of slavery would destroy the economic basis of the entire South; it would release half the population of the South to work for wages, undermining the "God-fearing" white lower class.  Socially, it would be an act that "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." (Stephen Hale, AL commissioner to KY).  The South as a whole was fed a steady diet of horror stories, not entirely false, of Haiti, Santo Domingo, Pottawatomie Creek, and Harper's Ferry.  It is certainly *not* justifiable to hold its population in bondage out of fears, but slavery and fears of its end touched upon far more than just the absolute minority of people who held slaves directly. 

Finally, note those territories that actively raised Unionist forces in the South: eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and western Virginia (most prominently what eventually became West Virginia post-war).  Correspondingly, these counties in the heart of Appalachia had very few actual slaveholders or slaves, and thus had fewer fears of the economic and social consequences of liberation.  Regions that were much more dominated by slaves were also more willing to favour secession.  This is, again, not a coincidence. 

Ultimately, the idea of states' rights being the primary driver behind the Civil War was a post-war, Lost Cause construct.  In the Antebellum era, states' rights was an excuse, just as states' rights became an excuse for segregation in the 1950s and 1960s; slavery was the driver.  The Antebellum South was socially and economically built on slavery.  When slavery was not threatened, support for secession was at best lukewarm.  By contrast, the end of slavery was the end of the South, and they reacted to this fear accordingly.

[Frumple]

I'll say this: If nothing else, the southern/conservative efforts to revise history vis a vis the civil war are pretty tenacious. Almost be admirable if what it was trying to downplay wasn't so odious. Probably be fine if it was just trying to point out there were other (smaller) reasons, but as we've seen in the last handful of posts that ain't exactly what's trying to be done.

... is it really so surprising the south doesn't have the most amazing reputation regarding history, though? We've kinda' been the usual final bastion of jackass for the last couple hundred years, and that's above and beyond the whole civil war thing. Sure, there's parts of the other regions of the country that've indulged, but it's tended towards a lot less "part" down here. Got some good shit going out, too, but... yeah.

Culture wise, yeah, there's a negative slant. And again, it's one of those "no shit, sherlock" things. If you've paid attention to it for the last few decades it's not exactly surprising -- most of the positive boils down to resourcefulness and hard work, an appreciation of natural stuff, and to a degree a veneer of politeness and helpfulness... maybe a bit of patriotism, too, vis a vis military enlistment (and not much else). And only that first pair comes without caveats -- that appreciation is alongside a powerful dislike for anything else, and I use the word veneer for a bloody reason. That politeness is used as much as a social weapon as anything, that helpfulness is tainted with a vicious xenophobia that shits on a lot of people, sometimes just folks from the next town over. Then the patriotism leans towards bloodthirsty as goddamn as its kind of starting point of nastiness. We do a pretty good job of trying to piss on whatever good general good points we got

And I guess the food. We know it largely kills the fuck out you, these days, but it's pretty tasty.

Then there's the rest of it. Beer (and not in a good sense or a celebration of alcohol culture), a monofocus on hunting/fishing, mechanical stuff, and (a specific handful of) sports, the anti-intellectualism (that shits on most common cultural exports, like writing, art, music*, etc., among the rest of the problems it causes), all the mess involved with the sexism, racism, xenophobia, and so on, the notable veneration of violence (even relative to the rest of the country)... it just kinda' keeps on going.

Southern culture's got a bad rep because southern culture has given itself a bad rep. A lot of the shit it promotes is just kinda' detestable, and holds on more due to inertia and stubbornness than anything related to merit. Throw in the association with poverty to top it all off, and there's nothing surprising about the regularly negative evaluation of southern culture. Folks ain't shitting on it just because of where it's coming from. Sodding live this stuff, and the general low opinion isn't exactly inexplicable. Even the internal support is half driven more by dislike of the metaphorical foreigner than anything else. We'll be the most odious bastards in the world if some damn <insert xenophobic slur> tells us to not be.

*We actually do okay, here, but the rub is a lot of the neat stuff we've done or are doing is drowned the bloody hell out by pop country and shitty gospel. There's still bastions of mountain music and zydeco and blues and bluegrass and whatnot lingering around but they can be hard to find a lot of the time.

Country music is Southern now?
Here I thought it was Western, and Bluegrass was Southern. That also seems more like a meme than anything else, but that might be because I live in a semi-rural part of my state.

Nah, country is primarily a southern thing, now, or at least the modern pop country (which is what has the heinous reputation, to the extent that there is one) is. Bluegrass is basically approaching dying down here, and hasn't really been a substantial thing for... longer than I've been alive, really. You can find country or gospel (sometimes rap or rock!) playing on just about every street corner, but if you want to find anything else (outside of more built up areas, anyway, and even for them you're generally talking more stuff that's not local; classical, touring bands, etc.) you're going to be hunting. That's almost especially true for the stuff that used to be more or less specialties.

[Reelya]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_music

Country started in the south, later Western music became popular because of the Western film genre in the 30's-40's, and they got lumped to get as Country and Western. But note the "and" part, and which ones comes first. After a while the "and Western" part just got dropped and we refer to all of it as Country now. Both Country and Western, separately had been recorded since the 1920s, but existed decades before that.

Bluegrass is actually much more recent - 1950's to 1960s, about the same time as Rockabilly was around. BTW Rockabilly has a ton of southern country influence as well. Country was commonly known as hillbilly music right up to the 1950s, which is where the term rockabilly comes from - hillbilly rock.

In 1980 a style of "neocountry disco music" was popularized.

Man, what ever happened to that style of music?

[mainiac]

Well, yeah. States want to keep enslaving people, but they can't, so they get pissed and leave.

Still doesn't sound so good for the South.

Ok... Here is a question for you.

What percent of the south owned a slave or benefited from a slave?

6% at its max.

Meaning 94% of the population fought for slavery that they in no way benefited.

More then half probably. Hard to tell because the employment data is sketchy.

6% is the percent that is a later familis of a rich household. Women children and grown ass men count too.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

Slavery served another purpose even if you didn't have slaves yourself: poor whites weren't the bottom caste in the system. So it also maintained class distinctions, meaning you weren't the literal bottom of the ladder. Tons of social systems, beliefs etc have this "underclass" for the working class to look down on.

Marxism had the "Lumpenproletariat" who were the despised class. The South had black slaves. India has the Dalits. It might be argued that the working class will always be aimed at some new enemy. We could abolish racism, but then the rage would focus on the unemployed, drug users or some other perceived OTHER. The despised group for a lot of people was Hippies back in the late 60s and 1970s. Basically the thing is, a society where all are equal is more appealing to either the very bottom caste (because they won't be downtrodden anymore), or the middle class (because they already see themselves as natural superior due to education, taste and culture etc. they can still look down on working-class types who come into better money). A lot of the working class themselves don't find that idea very appealing.

Actually, people would hate racists.

[Descan]

That is not a healthy position to take, yes, slavery is bad and needed to be removed.  I am firmly on the Union side on that point, but what the Confederates wanted was more control of their laws and regulations, to them it wasn't about slaves, it was about people who had never set foot in their states dictating policy to them.

the confederate constitution was just the unions constitution and laws, but with slavery slapped on it :U

and most states that declared a reason when they seceded, said "yeah it's about slavery"

[Reelya]

http://time.com/4236640/donald-trump-racist-supporters/

The Times found that nearly 20% of Trump supporters did not approve of freeing the slaves, according to a January YouGov/Economist poll that asked respondents if they supported or disapproved of “the executive order that freed all slaves in the states that were in rebellion against the federal government”—Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

[nenjin]

but what the Confederates wanted was more control of their laws and regulations

to them it wasn't about slaves

Despite the fact, you know, those two are intrinsically linked.

I never do get why some people try so hard to make the Civil War about anything but slavery. Sure there were plenty of other regional/political reasons but did any of those really stand the test of time in the minds of Americans? No. For some crazy reason, taxation and land rights don't seem to have a lasting impact on the American consciousness like depriving people of their rights and keeping them as thralls.

[RedKing]

but what the Confederates wanted was more control of their laws and regulations

to them it wasn't about slaves

Despite the fact, you know, those two are intrinsically linked.

I never do get why some people try so hard to make the Civil War about anything but slavery. Sure there were plenty of other regional/political reasons but did any of those really stand the test of time in the minds of Americans? No. For some crazy reason, taxation and land rights don't seem to have a lasting impact on the American consciousness like depriving people of their rights and keeping them as thralls.

That's a circular argument if I ever saw one. "Why do people argue that the war wasn't just about X? Side A won, and they said it was about X, and they won so obviously they're right."

Also, bit trickier to explain those kinds of motivations to schoolkids, vs. "South was all like 'pick that cotton or i'll beat you up' and Lincoln said 'hey stop that'"
And most people never delve past their grade school history lessons when it comes to the ACW.


But hey, what do i know, I'm a descendant of one of those filthy (non-slaveholding) Confederates.

[Reelya]

idk, just jumping in here, and going of Wikipedia, correct me if these facts are wrong: the Confederates seceded even before Lincoln was sworn in, and the big election issue was banning slavery in the Territories, which the southern states saw as a threat that slavery would be abolished federally. Since Lincoln hadn't actually enacted any other laws at this stage, what's the evidence that it was over anything except slavery?

Additional info: Out of the 7 states which seceded, they included the 6 biggest slave holder states, and they averaged 48.8% of their populations as slaves. "Slave states" is definitely the right term here. Another 8 slave-owning states rejected secession, but every one of those states had lower proportions of slaves than any of the big 6. The extent of slavery therefore 100% predicts whether or not any one slave-owning state would join the Confederates or not.

So when we say "just 6% were slaveholders, the other 94% were not". Well, ~49% of the population of those states were slaves: so whether the slave owners were 6% total or 6% of the whites-only, that means non-slave holding freemen were outnumbered by the slaves, so you could see that they might support not freeing the slaves, and it had nothing to do with directly profiting off slaves.

[Culise]

That's a circular argument if I ever saw one. "Why do people argue that the war wasn't just about X? Side A won, and they said it was about X, and they won so obviously they're right."

Also, bit trickier to explain those kinds of motivations to schoolkids, vs. "South was all like 'pick that cotton or i'll beat you up' and Lincoln said 'hey stop that'"
And most people never delve past their grade school history lessons when it comes to the ACW.


But hey, what do i know, I'm a descendant of one of those filthy (non-slaveholding) Confederates.

Because it's also that Side B lost, and they themselves also said it was about X until they lost and had to retrench behind a new moral shield.  However, since you bring it up, the problem isn't people who never delve beyond grade school lessons; the problem is people who learn grade school lessons weren't complete and assume it was all automatically false without bothering to look at why the grade school lessons existed in the first place.

[nenjin]

Southern Pride.

Yeah, what do I know. I only lived there for 15 years, still have family there, did about 4 school papers on it totally about 100 pages of writing and research, read Ken Burn's fucking tome on it.

But I guess I'm just some fucking Yankee who just adopts what Uncle Sam says. Stopping at the surface, indeed.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I liked this conversation better when we were talking about the modern cultural and economic gulf between the south and the rest of America instead of bickering on the inner war motivations of hundreds of dead people again.

[nenjin]

I liked this conversation better when we were talking about the modern cultural and economic gulf between the south and the rest of America instead of bickering on the inner war motivations of hundreds of dead people again.

How dare you imply that there is any detrimental difference between the North and South in today's America. Why, you're just regurgitating your conqueror's falsehoods that have been mercilessly beaten into you by the totally unaccredited American public education system!