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nucleicmaxid posted:Total War has a very similar effect. He didn't ship them to an Auschwitz like place, but he did some pretty terrible things in order to win the war. Whether that was justified or not is a little more up in the air considering what was actually happening at the time, but to try and say that you should start burning down cities and more or less salting the earth during today's South is pretty extreme. Sherman's March was a good idea. It was one of the best ideas that Northern commanders came up with during the war. Not only was the March limited to specific targets (foraging from large plantations, destroying military infrastructure), but it did more than any other single Union operation to destroy the institution of slavery. The March to the Sea freed countless enslaved people, crippled the Confederacy's war effort, and hastened the end of the war. So perhaps you can understand the reaction from non-Southerners when Southerners bend over backwards to reinvent the historical record of the March and mythologize it to the point of inventing family histories and imagining it as the anything approaching "salting the earth." Hell, look at how committed you are to imagining that maybe the March wasn't justified and insisting that it was universally terrible and most certainly not a good idea. Dealing with racism certainly requires more than just saying that the South it bad and certainly the rest of the United States is deeply implicated in the white supremacist society that we currently live in. Acknowledging that the South has had a unique experience with racism, however, does not automatically excuse Northerners and Westerners from being racist. But given that historical denialism has been one of the classic tools of denying racism, it gets exhausting listening to Southerners creating an alternate history of the Civil War.
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Jul 7, 2014 20:41
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Popular Thug Drink posted:It's just as historically revisionist to claim that Sherman only burned 'military' infrastructure, anything used by bushwhackers, bandits, militia, etc. counted as military and local commanders had discretion to do as they pleased. That's not entirely accurate. Corps commanders, not just whatever local commander on the ground, had discretion to burn property like mills, cotton gins, and plantation houses. Also, the most devastating blow to the Southern economy and way of life wasn't the burning of plantaions or cotton gins, it was the liberation of thousands of slaves in Georgia and the Carolinas. Popular Thug Drink posted:It also doesn't help anyone when foragers come by and sieze all of your military livestock, destroy the military roads and railroads, and tear up your military farmhouse. Except for the fact that it ends the war sooner? The March to the Sea knocked the Confederate war effort to pieces and made it difficult, if not impossible, to continue the war into the future. Popular Thug Drink posted:Sherman's March was absolutely total war performed against civilians, and while we're lucky that starvation and generational poverty was the worst result compared to the massacres that crop up when this happened elsewhere and when, it's odd how much people fetishize the march as some kind of petulant power fantasy against a symbolic caricature of the south. It's one of the more puzzlingly hypocritical aspects of internet liberals that they would nominally be against needless collective punishment except against dastardly racist white southerners. This right here is why it's so generally insufferable to listen to Southerners talk about their past. It's not the fault of generations of racism that papered over class divisions, crippled and destroyed any attempt at organized labor movements, and led poor Southerners into the arms of wealthy planters that was the cause of generational poverty, it was William T. Sherman. I'm curious how Sherman's March, rather than the existence of the plantation economy, was the real culprit behind generational poverty in the South, especially when Sherman was the mastermind of early Union attempts at land redistribution to African Americans along the Atlantic coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida (land redistribution that would have gone a long way to breaking the entrenched power of the Southern planter elite). The myth of the March to the Sea's limitless brutality was concocted by white Southerners to justify Reconstruction era resistance to federal authority and to support the myth of the Lost Cause. Tatum Girlparts posted:People who pretend Sherman was in any way just or moral in his march are literally saying it's ok to destroy an entire civilian population's livelihood and food sources because you're mad at their leaders. The idea that white Southerners opposed the war in significant numbers ignores not only the broad support for secession and war among the yeoman and laboring classes, but also ignores the broad white supremacist cross class coalition that had been created in the South, a coalition that co-opted poor whites into supporting slavery and the war effort because being a poor white man was better than being black in the antebellum and postbellum South. I'll also point out that that civilian population's livelihood was slavery first and foremost, and it's kinda great that the March to the Sea did more to irreparably shatter the slave system in the South than any other single military operation in the Civil War.
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Jul 7, 2014 23:48
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Totally agreed, Naked Lincoln, that's why I supported the napalming of Vietnam, lots of those guys were in favor of the war and ya know, it DID gently caress with the NVA a lot so, ya know, what's the real focus here? Slavery, schmavery, eh? Sure, the Confederate States began the war by seceding in defense of chattel slavery and sure their secession threatened the integrity and continued existence of the United States. Sure they literally started the war by firing on a federal fort. But whateves, that just like Vietnam. But hey, nice job countering claims that "lots of Southerners trivialize the history of the South, particularly with regard to slavery" by doing exactly that. Popular Thug Drink posted:You're getting a little histrionic here. I'm just trying to correct some of your historical errors, not resurrect the Lost Cause. If you can't discuss this topic with some restraint then I don't see the point. I don't think it's histrionic to claim that your argument that the March to the Sea was the cause of generation poverty is silly and overblown and completely unsupported by any modern scholarship (particularly since that reading would require ignoring the entire history of Southern politics and economics). You're right that the March to the Sea did lots of damage. I don't believe I ever claimed that it didn't or that it was inconsequential. What I've claimed is that the damage it did was targeted rather than indiscriminate and random and that it served a legitimate military end. Naked Lincoln fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 02:46
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Tatum Girlparts posted:"But slavery" doesn't excuse burning people's homes and fields for the crime of 'being kinda near where we're going' and basically condemning entire towns to go hungry because 'eh gently caress it'. You can be in a just side of the war and do terrible things, those two things don't cancel out or whatever. Except that the actual March wasn't just indiscriminate "let's burn cities and fields because we can" and the narrative of Sherman's ruffians burning everything, salting the earth, and leaving all the Southerners starving is largely a postwar, Lost Cause creation. Also, my point about slavery was largely in response to your pretty ridiculous comparison of the Civil War with the Vietnam War. It's also pretty important to understand that the mass-liberation of Southern slaves was irreparably connected to Sherman's attack on Southern property and was, in fact, the most universal attack on property during the Civil War.
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Jul 8, 2014 02:57
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Grand Theft Autobot posted:They supported farm price supports, a graduated income tax, the secret ballot, direct election of senators, the initiative and referendum, and government ownership of railroads, telegraph, and telephone lines. Woodrow Wilson talked a big Jeffersonian game, but the Southern radicals forced a very Rooseveltian program through his administration. Isn't part of the problem with the rise and fall of the Southern left linked to how race has historically operated in the South? The South's racial caste system hindered labor movements, for example, with white workers refusing to enter unions with black workers. The Populist Party certainly had its own problems with race (certainly Populists like Tom Watson subscribed to white supremacist ideals) and the New Deal Coalition in the South was often held together by the understanding that many New Deal benefits would be restricted to whites (the Democratic Party's insistence on civil rights legislation was one of the key factors in the GOP prying apart the New Deal Coalition). It ultimately seems like the same political and economic issues plaguing most of the country (poor whites voting against their self-interest to keep the Other from "mooching" off of Welfare) seem particularly highlighted in Southern states because of their particular history with regards to race, politics, and class.
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Jul 8, 2014 03:05
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Tatum Girlparts posted:You realize there's points between 'they literally salted the ground Carthage style' and 'they mainly focused on military targets and it's ok' right? They burned places to the loving ground dude, they took out a lot of farms and poo poo on the way because of suspected bushwackers, they were extremely overzealous. No, they didn't salt the land cackling madly like super villains and popping children in the head but the point is they hosed a lot of people who's only sin was 'being in Sherman's way'. But they didn't. Sherman and his corps commanders had orders to leave civilians alone who didn't interfere with the March. Places where Union troops didn't experience resistance and bushwacking weren't burned down. Hell, there are plenty of Southern narratives pointing out how Union troops explicitly prevented looting and burning. Sherman's policy wasn't just burn houses that are in my way. The March differentiated between secessionists, loyalists, and neutral Southerners and, even then, wasn't as violent or universal as you seem to be portraying it. Yes, barns were burned, outlying buildings were burned, but the mas burning of towns and houses is an exaggerated, postwar invention that is part and parcel with the Lost Cause. I also love that you start your post by saying that there's a grey area between Sherman's troops salting the earth/only targeting military infrastructure and end with "the path he carved was a wasteland." Let's just forget the fact that a major cause of death in the war (both among the soldiers and among contraband camps) was illness (largely the result of rural residents coming into contact with urban residents and their disease. Let's also ignore the fact that slaves, despite the hardships, overwhelmingly opted to follow the Union army. And, of course, let's not mention the fact that one can argue that the March to the Sea was a devastating blow to chattel slavery in the South without saying that Sherman was a literal saint. But by all means, keep dismissing the end of chattel slavery as not really justifying an attack on wealth planters. Sheng-ji Yang posted:So I guess Sherman didn't burn the entirety of Atlanta to the ground? I mean, maybe if you're watching Gone with the Wind. He ordered the destruction of military and government buildings, not the razing of the entire city.
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Jul 8, 2014 03:35
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Popular Thug Drink posted:It's funny that in your zeal to assert that you oppose Lost Cause mythology you end up whitewashing Sherman. Collective punishment against American civilians doesn't mean anything as long as they're in general proximity to slave owners! Saying that the March to the Sea wasn't the indiscriminate burning and pillaging of Southern homes doesn't whitewash Sherman but corrects 150 years of racist propaganda. But hey, maybe all those scholars are just also whitewashing Sherman! Also, white Southerners weren't just in the general proximity to slave owners, but were deeply politically, economically, and ideologically invested in the institution. The entire history of Southern race and class relations is linked to poor whites, yeoman farmers, and wealthy planters forming a political alliance throughout the antebellum period on the basis of their whiteness.
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Jul 8, 2014 04:17
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Nobody is saying it is indiscriminate burning, you're just insisting that the only two possibilities were an orderly march and sheer neo-Confederate propaganda. It's just funny how hard you're trying to posture yourself here, especially when you lead off with a really limp tone argument. But that is what people are arguing when they write about "burning homes just because they were in the way or in the general proximity of slave owners." Popular Thug Drink posted:And the implications of this when applied to civilians? You honestly don't see the ramifications of your argument here? Yikes. I'm sorry that you don't want to explore the fact that white Southerners (even poor ones) were very much committed to chattel slavery. I'm not sure about the ramifications since Sherman didn't target anyone who supported slavery (that would have been a strange decision since Sherman didn't oppose slavery himself and was pretty contemptuous of African Americans). Sheng-ji Yang posted:Sherman ordered the burning of every building in Atlanta except the hospitals and churches. Of the ~3,000-5,000 buildings in Atlanta when he captured the city, 400 remained when the smoke cleared. The March to the Sea continued this practice until reaching Savannah. Maybe you should stop posting about stuff you clearly know nothing about. Yeah, Mark Grimsley, Charles Royster, Mark Neely, and pretty much the entirety of modern Civil War historiography have no idea what they're talking about. Sherman ordered military, militarily useful, and government buildings burned. That hardly amounted to the destruction of 80 percent of the city. And Special Field Order 120 certainly doesn't say "burn everything that's not a church or hospital." James Reston, Jr.'s study of Sherman's March certainly brings up plenty of examples of Southerners insisting that Sherman burned homes and towns that are still standing. made of bees posted:Explain the existence of West Virginia. It's funny that you bring that up given that the poll posted at the beginning of this thread suggests that a lot of Southerners don't consider West Virginia the South. For a less glib response, what would become West Virginia was perfectly willing to ally with planters politically up until secession forced them to support a war for slavery. Wayne Durill, for example, traces this alliance throughout the antebellum period in North Carolina until 1861 when poorer Southerner's commitment to white supremacy and slavery wasn't enough to induce them to secede. Walter Johnson demonstrates how the "idea" of slavery served the same sort of aspirational hope as the idea of buying appliances in the 1950s. Poor Southerners saved money to buy slaves, took loans in order to buy slaves, and hoped and dreamed about one day joining the slave owning master class. You could also look at Stephanie McCurry's study of yeoman farmers in South Carolina, which demonstrates how planter politicians formed alliances with small slave owners across the state on the basis of the antebellum period's herrenvolk democracy. Virginians in what would become West Virginia benefited from the white supremacy that made them socially and politically better off than African Americans (free and slave). So, to answer your question, the alliance between planters and lower class whites had begun to fray in many Southern states by 1861, but it dictated the terms of Virginia politics throughout the antebellum period.
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Jul 8, 2014 05:13
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comes along bort posted:Someone like David Price or Jim Moran is about the furthest left you'll get in terms of actually elected to office. I don't know much about their specific policy positions, but what about people like Julian Bond, Morris Dees, or Jim Lewis? edit: I suppose Dees hasn't held office, but haven't Bond and Lewis served in Southern statehouses and the U.S. House respectively? Naked Lincoln fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 05:14
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Jastiger posted:The main point being made there, I think, is that those Northern assholes are assholes because they are being more South-like in their politics. If the South didnt' have such a stranglehold on our political process through powersharing of the states, people like Paul Ryan and Bachmann couldn't exist. I've been to the Straw poll in Iowa and I can tell you that it looks very out of place because of all the rhetoric concerning religion, minorities, and "big government". It clashes with the culture of the region, but is successful because of all the media circus that follows. This doesn't make a lot of sense. Religion, race, and the rhetoric of small government have always been important parts of American politics, not just Southern. Look at the racial, anti-immigrant politics of the West during Reconstruction (when no one could argue that the South dominated the political process). Look at the resistance to integration in the Midwest following the Civil Rights Act (again, arguably a period when the South was not at the forefront of the national political process). The New Right of the sixties that helped reinvigorate American conservatism was a national movement and some if their big leaders were from New England and Arizona (Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater).
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Jul 9, 2014 16:51
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