"What if the South won the ACW?" Topic

In 1861 the Confederates were all about slavery being the reason they left the Union. Beginning in 1866 the ex-Confederates were all about slavery never being the reason. It's all about rehabilitating the Confederacy on the question of slavery. Like it or not it is lost cause rhetoric.

I would love to know what they teach in TN for Confederate History Month. How not to Secede, How not to win, How to collapse after 4 years, How to ensure the one thing you dont want to have happen (emancipation) actually happens due to your own poor decisions. Also, How not to ever accept that you were on the wrong side of history?

Maybe it should get the subtitle; "Dont let this happen to you"?

All the policies the South opposed were passed by Congress because the South wasn't there to block them. The Homestead Act, the transcontinental railroad, emancipation, the 13th Amendment, and certain tariffs. The territories became free-soil states.

Jubal Early was a member of the Convention and an outspoken Unionist.

Jubal Early was one of the main proponents of the 'Lost Cause' mythology.

Jubal Early was a member of the Convention and an outspoken Unionist.

Jubal Early was one of the main proponents of the 'Lost Cause' mythology.

Both statements are true. Which just goes to show how the mind works. (or fails to)

Exactly Don.

What people who like to throw around "Lost Cause" cannot understand is that there were people who fought hard against secession right up until it became an accomplished fact. Then once it happened they threw themselves whole heartedly into the cause of Southern independence. People don't question that it could happen in the AWI, but they cannot accept that it also happened during the ACW.

People like things simple. When it comes to the cause of the ACw they like to quote what the states in the deep south said when they seceded. They ignore that in North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas secession fell flat in the days leading up to Lincoln's call for troops. It doesn't fit their narrative. And BTW it cuts both ways.

And then you had the southerners who remained loyal to the United States such as John Gibbon and Thomas, and what it cost them personally.

And people, some of them supposedly historians, still rely on the 'lost cause' mythology in recounting the events and the cause of the Civil War and after.

link

'Was the Confederacy doomed from the start in its struggle against the superior might of the Union? Did its forces fight heroically against all odds for the cause of states' rights? In reality, these suggestions are an elaborate and intentional effort on the part of Southerners to rationalize the secession and the war itself. Unfortunately, skillful propagandists have been so successful in promoting this romanticized view that the Lost Cause has assumed a life of its own. Misrepresenting the war's true origins and its actual course, the myth of the Lost Cause distorts our national memory. In The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, nine historians describe and analyze the Lost Cause, identifying ways in which it falsifies history—creating a volume that makes a significant contribution to Civil War historiography.'

link

link

'Twenty-first-century controversies over Confederate monuments attest to the enduring significance of our nineteenth-century Civil War. As Lincoln knew, the meaning of America itself depends on how we understand that fratricidal struggle.'

'As soon as the Army of Northern Virginia laid down its arms at Appomattox, a group of Confederate officers took up their pens to refight the war for the history books. They composed a new narrative—the Myth of the Lost Cause—seeking to ennoble the sacrifice and defeat of the South, which popular historians in the twentieth century would perpetuate. Unfortunately, that myth would distort the historical imagination of Americans, north and south, for 150 years.'

'In this balanced and compelling correction of the historical record, Edward Bonekemper helps us understand the Myth of the Lost Cause and its effect on the social and political controversies that are still important to all Americans.'

As a history teacher I can assure that all this conjecture is pointless for two reasons:

1. Great Britain and France would never recognize a Confederacy that still practiced slavery.

2. Britain was no longer dependent on southern cotton as they were getting it from Egypt and India through its monopolies.

A third point is that Napoleon was getting out of Mexico and could not afford to take on the U.S.

Napoleon III finally 'withdrew' from Mexico because an American army was massed on the border to force them out after the Civil War was over.

The final indicator that Great Britain and France would not intervene in the Civil War, which was a very real threat early in the war, was the Emancipation Proclamation, a brilliant political move on the part of Lincoln. It brought the subject of slavery to the forefront politically.

So, what is it like to teach history in Florida?

Britain was no longer dependent on southern cotton as they were getting it from Egypt and India through its monopolies.

By the late 1870s, the American South had reclaimed its dominant position as the world's leading supplier of raw cotton to the global textile industry. And that included the textile manufacturers of Great Britain. American cotton was of superior quality to that of either Egypt or India and better suited for use in British looms. From a shipping standpoint, cotton from the US South was closer at hand and consequently cheaper, easier and faster to reach Great Britain than cotton coming out of either Egypt or India. Egypt's cotton industry ultimately collapsed into bankruptcy as a result, which interestingly helped to set the table for British annexation of Egypt (and the Suez Canal).

B

link

The Southern state would have come to blows with each other over something.