To live or die for Dixie!

Sorry, I know the north is just as retarded as the south, but I see people defending the Confederacy and it makes me mad. I've seen ridiculous arguments from people from the south before. Apparently in some places in Texas they actually teach Texas was neutral during the civil war(the only state that can even remotely claim this is Kentucky, Texas was very active) and that they still have a right to form an independent country. Being taught. In public schools. It's just seems an attempt to gloss over some not so great moments in their history.

It's true though, many Southerners were in fact against secession, but regionalism ran high at the time, a lot of people were more loyal to their specific state vs the United States. It's interesting to think how it would've played out if the civil war never happened. While many abolitionists did want slavery dead right now, it wouldn't have been a political reality. Lincoln and the mainstream Republican stance was to just stop it's spread. This would've meant more free states in the senate, but even this wouldn't have done any good as the south would filibuster any attempt at slavery legislation that made any radical changes at once. Popular sovereignty could've kept going and more things like bleeding Kansas happen, but by the 1860's it was becoming hard to defend the institution of slavery. If we let more states continue to vote on allowing slavery I expect many nations would begin to embargo us.

 

I don't blame you.

Who do they think that Fort Hood was named for? General John Bell Hood was about as far from neutral in the war as a human being could be.

Ideally, economic pressure from trade sanctions would have led to positive steps toward ending slavery, much like what happened near the end of South Africa's practice of apartheid. The bloodshed in South Africa was very limited by American Civil War standards.

 

People actually forget the civil war was our mostly costly war, not WW2. Over 660,000 dead, countless more wounded. The population of north and south at the time was only about 30-31 million. In WW2 with less casualties our population was about 130 million

 

Yeah. It was a terrible price to pay for failure to compromise. That's not even counting the millions of people who had to live in poverty for the next 3 or 4 generations because of it.

 

While I doubt we need to worry about civil war breaking out again over the country's health care and infrastructure. The civil war should be a warning. The federal government did it's best to ignore the problem and keep pushing it off later and later because both sides knew hard choices had to be made. They kept pushing it off, until it exploded. In this case quite literally

 

There's evidence that the Southern aristocrfacy wanted to transition to class based slavery in which poor whites would have been enslaved as well.

I find it ironic that Southerners call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression when it was the South that fired the first shot when they attacked Fort Sumter.

In most other countries the Confederate military and gov't leaders wouild have been executed for high treason.

 

It's true, for example ironically in post reconstruction when they passed voting laws that made it near impossible to vote, more poor and uneducated whites lost the vote in most states then blacks.

 

Yeah, I live in texas and went thru high school here. They try to turn texas into the west. No, texas was and still is the south.

The civil war was not noble on the part of the south, it was fucked up, and the south needs to stop trying to justify it. It was the duty of the north to protect the union, and if the north hadent, the south would be a third world country today, people would be jumping the border to the north all the time, for the same reason the south lost: they didn't care about machines, industry, marketing, they just sat there trying to sell cotton. Well by the civil war the rest of the world had started growing cotton, they would have choked very fast had the north NOT fought to save the union.

 

Fortunately, that has become a rare term around here.

And worse yet, Hitler and Japan would have won WWII. A divided USA wouldn't have been strong enough.

 

do people in the southern united states really have nothing better to do with their time then have pride for something that failed.........................?
go wrastle some alligators

 

Many of them who resisted the civil rights movement still take pride in that, though they also failed! To such people I say give it up, even George Wallace admitted he was wrong!

 

Before the internet and cable TV came along...we didn't have much else, besides drinking and fucking. And some towns didn't have alcohol.

 

Reconstruction would have gone alot better for the South had Lincoln not been assasinated.

What was that quote that went somewhere along the lines of "Had Lincold been a surgeon he would have used a scalpel but Johnson would have used a broadaxe.' source anyone?

 

oh, and there's no such thing as racism above the mason-dixon line, right? not at all? never has been? and certainly there are no old people up there who are stuck in the past because of their senility/age/ignorance or whatever? if you think that you're so much better than us just by virtue of where you were born then go fuck yourself, because you're just as ignorant as all my fucking inbred-ass neighbors. yes, there are bigots in the south. there are also bigots in the west, the midwest, the northeast, new england, china, denmark, ghana, australia, everyfuckingwhere on earth. in all these places, you'll find there are also people who aren't racists. so get off your fucking high horse and let go of a conflict that has no participants alive today. stop judging the entire population of a region based on what you and all the other smug yankee motherfuckers see on t.v. yeah, i said "yankee", and it's just something we all say, a mere colloquialism and not my condoning the ownership of human property.

i just helped the other members of the historical society at my college raise the money to erect a state historical marker at the last place the rev. dr. martin luther king, jr. ever spoke in mississippi. do y'all even close school for his day? i've heard that many places don't.

also, my family has lived in jones county, mississippi, since well before the civil war. The Free State of Jones. ever heard of it? (there's a new book out. my history teacher and one of our deans helped with its creation) it was not part of the union or the confederacy. they sent two representatives to jackson to vote AGAINST secession. unfortunately, those fellas got up there and got caught up in the spirit after hearing all those speeches. they voted, along with the rest of the state, for secession. when jones county received word, they waited for them and hanged them on the courthouse lawn in ellisville.

sorry for the rant but i'm so sick of all the smugness. every place has things in its history that are terrible. we shouldn't forget them, but we also can't let them hamper the present. another thing to consider is that in 200 years, people will look back on something you did and think it was barbaric and awful. a lot of those folks were just men or women of their day. also, whether y'all want to admit or not, a lot of people who didn't own slaves and didn't give a shit about that issue fought because the yankees were down here. let's not forget which side did more burning and raping and stealing. still more men were drafted. point is, we're not like that today, just like new york city doesn't have N.I.N.A. signs in the windows. some of us do have confederate battle flags displayed- sometimes because of racism, sometimes to simply identify yourself as southern, or for the reasons the OP named. or maybe out of pride that your ancestors stood up for their convictions, whether they were right or not. i do plan to leave mississippi for new england as soon as i have a B.S. in my hand. i've put in 21 years here and i know the state has it's share of problems, just as every state does. but unless you've lived here, you shouldn't be allowed to say anything about its people's attitudes, because all you've seen is a small sampling of us. and i didn't mean to call all yankees smug either. sorry

 

See the problem is while there is racism to all races everywhere, the south had institutional racism going on that a good deal of the living population can still remember. Remember most of our parents were born(maybe not old enough to remember, though a good deal probably were, and our grandparents for sure) being around for the Civil Rights act of 64 that the south tried desperately to filibuster and stop. And they remember all the violence that came before it.

Personally my major issue with the south is they're the ones who complain about government spending and "socialism" and block health care reform despite the fact the north east, great lakes states and west coast basically pump money into the south and mid west.

 

hahahahhahaahahhaaha

 

whose that, the head klansman?

 

other regions have had segregation and institutionalized racism too. maybe not as recently or to the same extent (not nearly, actually). but read anything about sojourner truth and you'll hear her description of the segregated streetcars in northern cities. in the civil war, blacks fighting for the union did so in all-black units. same thing in both world wars. and let's not forget northern cities' use of eminent domain. building a highway through an established black neighborhood and forcing them all into the projects sounds institutionalized to me. and the way it seems some yankees treat black people today is sick. they're not people, they're accessories one can carry around to show everyone how tolerant you are. notice i'm not saying that everyone does this, it's just an impression that i've got.

just know that race relations in mississippi are pretty good. we've come a long damn way. still a ways to go, but the progress we've made so far is not to be overlooked. all that shit in the past was awful, and we've not come as far as we should've. but it's not as bad as you think. a lot of mississippians are trying to finally bring justice to the families of slain civil rights leaders. don't forget that we put sam bowers and byron de la beckwith away. at least we're trying. also, a few decades after the james meredith stuff at ole miss, the university hosted a presidential debate in which the first black president participated.

i do so agree with you about the socialism/tax dollars thing. it's extremely frustrating being a liberal democrat in south mississippi. you don't know how many times i've heard the phrase "obama needs to keep his socialist hands off my medicare!" or something to that effect. they held a bunch of those damn "tea parties" at our local courthouse. i drove past one and saw people that i know have medicare, medicaid, ssi, foodstamps, went to school on a pell grant if they went, kids are on free lunch at public schools, would pitch the biggest fit if the roads weren't maintained, etc. yet they're all afraid of socialism, too stupid to realize that they're already benefitting from it.

like i said, i do plan to leave mississippi. i do think it sucks, but that it's unfair for people from elsewhere to judge. but this has made me question how i would be received up in new england somewhere. will people judge me unfairly when they hear my accent? is everyone going to assume i'm stupid, or bigoted, or backwards in one way or another?

 

hahaha, actually former imperial wizard sam bowers used to eat at the jitney jungle deli every sunday in my hometown. then they locked his old ass up, and i think he died in prison. never said mississippi didn't have its problems. he shouldn't have been in there socializing and enjoying chicken and greens and pink salad after ruining so many people's lives.

 

I'm going to be honest............yes. I mean you won't get hate but people will make "lol the south" jokes. I can't deny I think the same, there's just something about a southern accent for how slow and drawl it is that just makes it sound what we've come to associate up here with stupid. Which is ironic because while I'm thinking that if you ask a British person they'll say all Americans sound stupid because no matter where you are in the country the accent is slower and words pronounced less sharp then the various British accents



Also speaking of the clan, Harry Reid was a former grand wizard or whatever the fuck they call it. Jesus what is wrong with our country