If we are "Proud Confederates"...

If we are Proud Confederates, why are so many of the members of this office prone to insulting Southerners and the Confederacy?

I'm just wondering. I mean really, even if the War Between the States HAD been about Slavery, it is a commonly accepted fact that Slavery was on the way out throughout this continent anyway and so regardless of who won or lost, would have been passe' in the coming decade. So why harp on it?

The Confederacy had many worthy and notable contributions to society. Some died out in the hard times that occured - a natural death when your population is reduced to absolute want and poverty, yet some remained. Why dont' we discuss some of the fine Southern Contributions?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Che Pancho Villa on July 26, 2010 at 11:35am

Mrs. Chestnut: Here are some contributions the Confederacy brought to warfare in general:

1.) The first successful submarine - the CSS Hunley.

2.) The world record for the most tonnage sunk by an ocean going sea raider or privateer - the CSS Alabama.

3.) The first accurate sniper rifle - the 58 CAl. Whitworth riflle.

4.) Trench Warfare - examples would be at Petersburg and works around Atlanta although trenches were used in the Crimean War. But nobody paid any attention

5.) The first success land and sea mines - called torpedoes at the time.

6.) Blitzgrieg Warfare - this was an all arms force, all cooperating together practiced by General Nathan Bedford Forrest at Brice's Crossroads and other battles. That is, infantry, cavalry and artillery all working together.

7.) The first armored warship albeit topped later by the Union Monitor which had a revolving turrent.

8.) The Head Log which was used to prevent crushing soldiers in fortified positions when their position was hit by cannon fire.

9.) The use of air balloons as an observation post for artillery and intelligence.

10.) The first to recognize that Nepolian's tactics resulted in mass suicide.

11.) The first to rush reserves to a battle by rail. ie., moving Longsteet's Corps from Virginia to Chickamauga.

Frankly, none of these inventions contributed to society in general but rather they made killing people easier.

Permalink Reply by Van on July 26, 2010 at 1:03pm

You say Slavery was on the way out, but that's not true. It was until the invention of the cotton gin made cotton a huge money-maker for plantation owners:

The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth of the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. The growth of cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As a result, the South became even more dependent on plantations and slavery, making plantation agriculture the largest sector of the Southern economy.[7] In addition to the increase in cotton production,the number of slaves rose as well, from around 700,000, before Eli Whitney’s patent, to around 3.2 million in 1850.[8] By 1860 the United States' South was providing eighty percent of Great Britain’s cotton and also providing two-thirds of the world’s supply of cotton.[9]
Cotton had formerly required considerable labor to clean and separate the fibers from the seeds; the cotton gin revolutionized the process. With Eli Whitney’s introduction of “teeth” in his cotton gin to comb out the cotton and separate the seeds, cotton became a tremendously profitable business, creating many fortunes in the Antebellum South. New Orleans and Galveston were shipping points that derived substantial economic benefit from cotton raised throughout the South.
According to the Eli Whitney Museum site:
Whitney (who died in 1825) could not have foreseen the ways in which his invention would change society for the worse. The most significant of these was the growth of slavery. While it was true that the cotton gin reduced the labor of removing seeds, it did not reduce the need for slaves to grow and pick the cotton. In fact, the opposite occurred. Cotton growing became so profitable for the planters that it greatly increased their demand for both land and slave labor. In 1790 there were six slave states; in 1860 there were 15. From 1790 until Congress banned the importation of slaves from Africa in 1808, Southerners imported 80,000 Africans. By 1860 approximately one in three Southerners was a slave.

The South made many worthy and notable contributions to society, Not the Confederacy, although as Pancho points out they did make many contributions to military science. The South and The Confederacy are not the same thing.

Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on July 26, 2010 at 2:54pm

The invention of the cotton gin, in 1850, (the WBTS began in 1860), opened up the potential for the use of less people to pick the cotton, hence it opened the door for the abolition of slavery.

Your comments are well thought out and stated, Van, but I wish that you had thought it all the way through. This thread though, is about the good things that emanate from the South or the Confederacy. Slavery, in my humble opinion, is NOT a good thing, was not exclusive to the South (States other than than those that seceded also had slaves, like the border states - Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky) and does not address my thread.

Permalink Reply by Fang1944 on July 26, 2010 at 1:58pm

For a long time it was received doctrine that slavery was inefficient and unprofitable, that it would have died out.

Engerman and Fogel's Time on the Cross (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974) presents stats that indicate that slavery was very profitable, economically vital. Of course, other historians came out with book to refute Engerman and Fogel, then they refuted the refuters and so on.

In the 1850s Southern politicians were calling for the annexation of Cuba and Mexico so that the slavery system could be expanded, and, of course, the Dred Scott decision revolved around the South's desire to expand slavery into the new territories and the North's desire to stop it.

After Reconstruction, which only lasted about five years, the South passed the Black Codes which essentially restored slavery for the rest of the 19th century.

So it's not as simple as saying that slavery was on the way out.

Permalink Reply by Che Pancho Villa on July 26, 2010 at 2:35pm

Good point I quess - but we what have today is really nothing more than slavery. I know my son can't live on his wages - and he is just able to feed himself and baby without enjoying any appreciable quality of life. But what slavery has to do with Mary's question, I have no idea? I thought hard on this one, and can't find anything cultural benefit the South gave to society except maybe jazz, home cooking, country music, blues, good sippin whiskey and perhaps a fighting spirit that settled most of the South, took land ceded to the Indians, and kicked Mexico's butt, so we now have the entire Southwest and Texas - and I'm not sure that the Southwest is any benefit to any of us East of the Mississippi, and it looks as if the Mexicans and latinos are taking it back one illegal person at a time.

Permalink Reply by Van on July 26, 2010 at 3:03pm

A friend of mine called what we have now "corporate serfdom". The South also gave us gracious manners. As for the Mexicans and Latinos, I think they want to join us in the American dream. Why don't we work together and build a better country. One where your son can make a good middle class wage along with everyone else.

Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on July 26, 2010 at 6:13pm

We do have corporate serfdom. I like that expression to describe things, but I hate the reality. My son is a welder and his job has recently ended. He worked it for a long time, but his job has, like many construction jobs, gone to illegal immigrants in my part of the country. It distresses me. I don't know where you live, by I live so far in the deepest of the South, that many of my neighbors are Northerners. Do I resent the influx of illegal aliens (and alien cultures, when they are forced upon us) taking what used to be good middle class jobs?

Heck yes I do!

In the South, we let our dogs run. It's what they do, and my hound dog's bay causes many new comers to assume that while he's baying at a cat, I must be beating him, for such a sound to issue from him. That just ain't right. My kind of dog - a black and tan coonhound, has been here forever.

Permalink Reply by Van on July 27, 2010 at 6:06am

Sorry about your son. Because of the housing bust even many illegal immigrants are out of work and have left the country. It serves the corporations well to pit the working people against each other. Black against white, native born against immigrant, teaparty against liberals. But there's no reason we can't have good jobs for all. That's part of the liberal/progressive agenda. A good start would be building and installing windmills and solar power. The failure of the climate bill puts a damper on that.

As for your dogs, I too used to let my dogs roam, but those days are over. At least if you live in the city. Too many dog attacks in the news. We did have a legendary stray dog in one part of our city(Richmond, Va). Animal control tried to hunt him down for years, but never could catch him. His sightings sometimes made the newspaper.

Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on July 27, 2010 at 4:10pm

Thank you Van. MY son will survive because here in the south, we have a strong community spirit. we take care of our own.

My daughter walked my dear Forrest several years ago, on a leash, with napkins in her hand, as the law requires. A Northerner had just moved in down the street, and as my male dog lifted his hind leg to 'say hello' to a lamp post, that northerner stuck his head out the door and began to use swear words, and insisted that she remove her mutt from his property or he'd "Kick her [hind-quarter]!" (I change the word for propriety's sake, but I think you know what I mean.) My husband interceded on his innocent daughter's behalf and let that fool know that here in the South, we don't take lightly to interlopers who claim County Property as their own, when we all know that all of us who live here own it, and that that [leaving a message] on a utility pole is every dog's right."

Well that silly fast-talkin' fool had no clue what to make of that, and since then, takes every opportunity to retell the tale to whomever he meets. I laugh, because in this neighborhood, most people are native, and if not, have learned the native ways.

That fellow lives in an insular world, does not even know how he ha alienated himself. Am I sad for him? Oh I smile and say, "Ain't that a shame..."

Permalink Reply by Fang1944 on July 26, 2010 at 3:06pm

Well, remember the South also produced William Faulkner, James Branch Cabell, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Larry McMurtry, J. Frank Dobie, Tennessee Williams, Katherine Anne Porter, Robert Penn Warren, John Henry Faulk ...

Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on July 26, 2010 at 6:13pm

Heck yes - the Southern writers are the cream of the crop. I'm so glad that you listed these - many among my favorites. :)

Permalink Reply by Mary Chestnut on July 26, 2010 at 6:18pm

...Truman Capote, John Kennedy Toole, Harper Lee, and many others who defined the Gothic style of writing - the original Gothic, I mean, not the trite light horror or romance, but True Southern Gothic, where the walls sweat, where you cannot put the book down, no matter how sultry the words get, the pages that stick together with intent.

What about the University of the South at Suwannee and Vanderbilt and other fine institutions that defined higher learning, that taught thinking, as well as honor. These things are good.