In elementary I was taught slaves. In high school I was taught that it is complicated. Then when I did my own research I found out it was really just slaves.

Usually things get more nuanced as you get older. This was a weird case where the simple explanation in elementary school was actually more accurate

Did all those confederate leaders really rebel against the USA though? I would argue that there existed no United States of America at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War. The country was divided beyond the breaking point between a slightly more populous north with overwhelming support in favor of abolishment and the south, which still had almost half the population of the country, with overwhelming support against abolishment.

The North used its small majority in the democratic institutions of the country and its superior industrial base to force its will on large parts of the country who were totally against it, willfully destroying the economic and social basis of the Southern society. It was a brutal act of "tyranny of the majority" and from a purely political theory point of view, that's absolutely not how democracy is supposed to work. History would judge the North far more harshly if the Civil War had been fought for any other cause than ending slavery, a system which is simply abhorrent and morally unambiguously wrong. The North was on the right side of history, but this fact shouldnt prevent us from acknowledging that its methods were absolutely brutal for the South.



Regarding Germany: those who committed high crimes or occupied a high position within the Third Reich (say Wehrmacht generals or leaders of the Nazi party) were stripped of their titles, privileges and access to influential positions. Those who were not were generally allowed to continue as if nothing had happened, even if they had been part of the Nazis. The problem in post-ww2-Germany was simply that the Nazis were such a totalitarian movement that almost no one had no ties to them at all. There were simply too few persons with both a clean sheet and the required qualification to staff the necessary functional elites of the new state. Most of the judges, mayors, politicians, professors in post-war Germany had been part of the Nazi party - just not in an exposed role. A potential hero status from ww1 didnt play much of a role at all iirc.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 10 2020 04:02pm

Secession is an act of open rebellion and by joining and fighting FOR the Confederacy. I'd definitely say they were traitors. No one recognized the Confederacy internationally so it was definitely illegitimate. Sure, the states weren't united, but the USA was still a functioning country.

Saying that the North committed a brutal act of tyranny from the beginning is revisionist history. The South seceded and they were WINNING for quite a while. Now, was Sherman's march brutal? Absolutely. But that's war.

Sorry, I did a poor job putting my argument to words. Let me try again.

- At the time of the Civil War, slavery was a very contentious issue. There was large and passionate support for and against it. This is fundamentally different from the situation nowadays where there is overwhelming consensus that slavery is unacceptable and a crime.
- The North forced its view on this contentious issue on the South, and was willing to send troops to achieve that.
- You are essentially arguing that Confederate leaders are supposed to be blamed and shamed for having fought for the position they took on the wedge issue of the time.



It basically went down like this:

North: "Slavery is horrible, stop it."
South: "We disagree, and we wont stop it."
North: "No, we're serious, stop it right now."
South: "Sorry, but our entire economy is based on slavery, abolishing it would ruin us."
North: "We dont care, and we're dead serious. Look, abolitionist Abraham Lincoln has been elected president based on exclusively Northern support with 39% of the popular vote. He got fuckall support from the South (see [1]), but he's still gonna make the rules for you guys now. Slavery ends right here right now."
South: "Those are not the rules we agreed on when we signed the Constitution 70 years ago, and we will not allow someone from the North who was elected without any support from the South to destroy our Southern social and economic model. Since we cant come to an agreement on the slavery issue and it is too central to allow for a compromise, it's best if we go separate ways from now on. Fuck this shit, we're gone."
North: "NO!!! You will do as we say. You are not allowed to unilaterally leave the Union, no matter how much you hate the changed rules, no matter how little say you had in this rule change, and if necessary, we will force you to come back into the Union and end slavery by sending troops."


Is it really that hard to see how this situation was super encroaching and unacceptable from the perspective of the South? Yes, from a purely technical point of view, the secession of the Confederation was a rebellion - but it was also a reaction to the other half of the country unilaterally changing the rules and preparing to force its will on them without (small d) democratic input from the South. Like I said: if the disagreement had been about any other issue where it's less unambiguous who was on the right and wrong side of history, then today's scholars would rate the behavior by the North and South VERY differently.




[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/RepublicanPresidentialCounty1860Colorbrewer.gif/1280px-RepublicanPresidentialCounty1860Colorbrewer.gif

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 10 2020 05:18pm

This is incorrect because of the South were the ones who seceded and the ones who started the aggression. I'm on my phone at work right now but I can explain further or just give you a fun video to watch when I get to a computer

I know that the South seceded, but that was just a reaction to the imminent and inevitable push from the North to outlaw slavery via federal law.

The bold isn't true. Yes, Lincoln ran on stopping the expansion of slavery but he certainly didn't run on the abolition of it. He believed that the US government didn't have the authority to abolish slavery at the federal level. In essence, when new territories were added to the union, he didn't want those states to have slavery as an institution. Again, this is due to whitewashing the Civil War. In order to garner sympathy, the South had to paint Lincoln and Republicans as tyrants. This narrative is pervasive in America to this day! Unfortunately, if you study the positions of Lincoln and the Republican party as a whole, you will see that the Lost Cause narrative is pretty off base.

As for Confederate leaders, yea they should be blamed! They openly rebelled against the government! If the Communists lost the Russian Revolution, would we not call them traitors? The Americans were certainly traitors to the British Crown and I wouldn't expect the British military to name forts after George Washington despite the fact that Washington fought in the French-Indian War FOR the British.

The bolded part is key: at the time, the admission of more and more territories and their eventual statehood was occuring frequently and it was obvious that this would continue for quite some time. Forcing all of the new states to be free states would inevitably shift the power balance in the country against the Southern slavery states. It would inevitably have set them up to be majorized in Congress and presidential elections, and for slavery to eventually be abolished via federal law, backed by a North-Western majority.

Basically, the writing was on the wall: if Lincoln had his way and all new states would be slave-free, then the end of slavery itself was inescapable.


However, after reading some more on the details, I will admit that I have overstated the willingness of Lincoln/the North to use military against the South unprovoked.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 10 2020 05:54pm

I guess all I have to say is "so what?" No one likes defending a position that's a dying one. Slavery was banned in Europe decades before (sometimes centuries). The writing was already on the wall regardless of Lincoln's in. Anyway, that's the way the world works and has always worked. Losing political power doesn't give you the right to rebel. And if you DO rebel, you better hope that you win!

If their secession had been successful, they could have retained slavery for at least another century. For example if there had been no Confederate attacks on federal forts and such, and the North had decided that it's better off without those agrarian southern states anyway...

Your argument also doesnt address the fact that slavery was widely practiced and accepted at the time of the ratification of the Constitution. Being outvoted by a more dynamically growing other part of the country which then forces you to change the central pillar around which your society is organized against your will - that's not what anyone in the South had in mind when they signed up and joined the Union.

By seceding, the South was basically saying "that's not what we signed up for, and if those are the new rules of the club, then we dont want to be a part of it anymore". I really dont think that this sentiment should be held against the South, no matter how much they were on the wrong side of history on the underlying issue of slavery.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 10 2020 06:44pm