Originally Posted by
mickeycrimm
Originally Posted by
Mission146
What the hell is Southern Pride? Why would they have pride? They existed as a nation for a few years and LOST their only war quite badly. Every male Confederate soldier should have been executed for treason---no surrender accepted otherwise. They should have let Sherman keep going; he was doing a fabulous job.
Every Union troop should have been executed for invading and making war in territory that didn't belong to them. The southern states legally seceded from the union.
THERE IS NOTHING IN THE CONSTITUTION THAT FORBIDS SECESSION.
AND THERE IS NOTHING IN THE CONSTITUTION THAT SANCTIFIED THE INVASION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES.
The Confederacy won almost all the major battles. The north lost 100,000 more troops than the south. Lincoln kept running thru generals until he found a drunk that would fight a war of attrition. He threw up men to the slaughter in order to win.
Why did the south fight so hard? They were invaded. 90% of Confederate troops were yeoman farmers that didn't own slaves. They fought to protect their homes and families from invasion by the northern aggressors.
With the elites the war was not fought over slavery. It was fought over disunion. Southerners wanted to rid themselves of the union (they had every right to) and the north wanted to preserve the union.
Sherman was a terrorist that committed many atrocities.
They legally seceded from the Union? Do you know why they legally seceded from the Union?
The entire Civil War comes down to slavery...even if that's not the company line. The main thing that the South was concerned about was that U.S.A. wanted to prohibit slavery in its newly acquired territories. Some people might ask, "Well, why would that be a problem for the South? Did they love slavery so much that they wanted to expand it?"
No, it's not so much that they wanted to expand slavery into the new territories specifically. What the South was mostly concerned about is that the new territories would eventually become states, so without getting the institution of slavery in those states, the South was concerned that there would ultimately come a time that Congress could vote to make slavery illegal in all of the land---even if it were to require a Constitutional Amendment. In other words, without expanding slavery (which only maybe would have worked), the South was going to lose the numbers game and the institution of slavery was going to go away.
Southern states didn't want to see that happen, so seceded. Lincoln being elected as POTUS also had a lot to do with it, despite the fact that he had somewhat toned down his anti-slavery rhetoric compared to before and originally intended just to try to keep the Union together.
What in the Constitution sanctified the invasion of the Southern States? Start with the fact that we can declare war on whoever the fuck we want to. It doesn't need to be sanctified.
Guess what, Mickey--=it's war, you do what it takes to win. They didn't fight to protect anything except for their own wallets---why do you think slavery was so important to them in the first place? As far as the, "90% of the Confederate troops," it's the same thing that it always is with the working class fighting the battles of the wealthy and political elites---that's pretty much any war.
The North had every right to try to preserve the Union by virtue of the fact that the USA can declare war on whomever the fuck it wants to.
As far as Sherman goes, Sherman is an example of a true hero and patriot who did what had to be done to bring us to a dominating victory over the South, "War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen; I say let us give them all they want." The South was just lucky that it didn't test Sherman's patience; he could have done far worse.