The Southern Rebellion cost America the lives of over half a million people. All in the name of a state's right to allow legal slavery, when the issue of banning slavery wasn't even on the table with Lincoln.I did not say a harsher backlash was not possible. I meant it was hard to imagine a harsher backlash, given the reality of the situation.You mean how The North didn't execute the entire leadership of the Rebellion? You think King George would have been as nice if the American Revolution had failed?As for "too harsh a backlash," it's hard to imagine it being harsher.
Sure the heck could have been worse!
Honor? It seemed more like a parallel with God telling Abraham to sacrifice Issac, ie... blind obedience.I congratulate you on your knowledge of the south.And do you think the poor whites would rise to keep the rich in their mansions? It was at that moment that the south was most divided against itself.
There were people, like General Sherman and President Johnson himself, who proposed measures that were considerably harsher. And don't forget that ol' Machiavelli, who straight up said that when conquering a country, you should dispossess the rich and powerful and establish colonies of loyal citizens. So no hindsight necessary.
Two of my great grandfathers served in the Confederate Army. One was wounded at Gettysburg and the other spent two years in a contract prison of war camp in Connecticut. Neither of them ever owned a slave, yet for some reason, they both enlisted. I don't expect a 21st century Minnesotan to understand the motivation of a pair of 19th century North Carolina farmers, but for the ordinary Confederate soldier, the fight was more about place than slavery. Their county, their town, and their state called them and they answered. I have to concede this is a bizarre concept in this time. If there were a call for my neighbors to defend the honor of Baton Rouge, I'm not sure we could muster enough people to fill park bench.
Boo fucking hoo. If the South didn't want to suffer the consequences of a war, they shouldn't have rebelled in the first place. They could have quit at any time.The war affected the rich, the poor, and the middle class, much alike. When I was young, from the ages of about 5 to 12, I lived in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In the backyard of my house was a 13 inch mortar. This was a large round iron ball, which was supposed to explode and destroy everything in a 50 foot radius. It did not explode and was found many years later, while digging the foundation of the house where I lived. Even 100 years after the siege of the city, it was still common to find unexploded ordnance.
Consider this for a moment. A warship of the United States Navy fired a 200 pound explosive shell, which was capable of leveling a 100 foot circle, killing any and all, into a residential neighborhood. Most of the other shells did explode. Such experiences have a way of unifying people. It would be a mistake to imagine the white southerners who survived the experience would be divided if confronted with more of the same.
The Colonies rebelled to form a democracy, the South rebelled to create a permanent institution of slavery.
I'll need to register this post with the Institute of missed points.