Southern Historical Society Holds First Meeting May 1869 for “history of the war from a Southern stand-point”

4 thoughts on “Southern Historical Society Holds First Meeting May 1869 for “history of the war from a Southern stand-point””

1. Any justification of the Southern standpoint cannot even be just questionable because it is absolutely wrong. The Confederacy of the southern states, its economy, and all livelihood only exclusively existed because of Slavery. One of the worst crimes a human being can commit upon another human being. That will nullify any pride Southerners took in fighting the North.

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   1. Your comment shows a determination to exclude pertinent evidence and information from consideration.

      The fact is that slavery and race were not the only
      factors that caused the Civil War/War Between The States to occur.

      Federalism/States rights, tariffs/economics and culture/regionalism all could and did indeed converge into slavery. However, these all could and did just as surely diverge from slavery to be independent and important factors in their own right.

      An inter-American military conflict had been foreseen as early as 1787 in Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Papers, (also where we get the terms of Civil War and War Between The States from). Since slavery had only very recently ended, or was still in practice in the Northern states when he wrote, it can’t be argued that it was the reason he foresaw war coming, (which reading the text of his essays further confirms).

      One ought to examine the New England states in the War of 1812; South Carolina in the Nullification Crisis and Maine in the Aroostook War to see the point even further, not to mention read for example the documents of Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart and James Longstreet from war’s start, and John Mosby’s surrender speech at the END OF THE WAR, instead of merely his statement 42 years later, not to mention to consider such evidence as the Fathers of Canadian Confederation and Santiago Vidaurri of the Mexican provinces of Nuevo León and Coahuila.

      IF one argues that at least at the start of the war, the South desired to expand slavery, then one has to concede that at war’s start, the North was willing to reconvene all the rights to slavery that already existed and enshrine them forever.

      Where is the moral high ground in that?

      Any argument that expanding slavery is the greater sin then has to put exactly the same condemnation upon the USA for the 1846-48 Mexican American War when the vast majority of the sources tell us that expansion of slavery was the prime reason for that war; to conquer new American lands to create new American slave states out of.

      And any argument that the North changed its fight to include emancipation has to just as openly concede the South did same by virtue of the near-clinched 1862 Confederate Emancipation Treaty with Britain and France, and the later Duncan F. Kenner Mission.

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2. Civil War never ended. It just changed costumes and context. Slavery to wage slavery in the South. Ending slave status as expensive property to be cared for to hired and fired at will wage slaves of impoverished land owners was not much improvement. Illinois Indiana Ohio passed laws prohibiting in migration of former slaves from Southern States. Northern Pots and Southern kettles exchanging epithets over their relative blackness is pointless. Northern moralizing is somewhat hypocritical. Slaves made up such a large part of Southern capital they simply couldn’t accept emancipation without some financial compensation which was not available. The South was trapped in slavery by its cotton/tobacco staple economy. Just as slum dwelling day laborers were trapped in poverty by exploitative capitalist businesses. Slavery was the dominant way of life for most people throughout history.

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   1. Slavery was still wrong then, as for example, both Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee, posited.

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