Was the Civil War fought over slavery?

[Syriusly]

How could the war be about slavery when BOTH sides practiced slavery?. Yes - the Union had 4 slave states of its own, (ky md mo de) with a total of 400,000 slaves. The idea that lincoln wanted to free the slaves is absurd in light of that fact.

History is written by the victors and so, after the war, the North started the myth that they invaded the south to free the slaves.

Right. The PhD head of the history dept at the United States Military Academy at West Point is wrong and you're right.

4) Thousands of blacks fought for the South to defend their homes, regardless of slavery.

200,000 blacks fought for the North- a large amount of whom were escapted- and freed slaves.

Please provide some evidence that 'thousands of blacks' fought for the South- I have looked- and other than the slaves accompanying their masters into battle, I have found little documented evidence of free blacks fighting for the Confederacy.

“Black Confederates” is one of the most controversial ideas of the Civil War era and American memory more generally. Today, neo-Confederates claim that thousands of blacks loyally fought as soldiers for the South and that hundreds of thousands more served the Confederacy as laborers. These claims have become a staple among Southern heritage groups and are taught in some Southern schools. Their function is to purge t...he Confederacy from its association with slavery and redeem the white South from guilt over its past. In this they have been partly successful: according to a recent poll, 70% of white Southerners continue to believe that the Confederacy was motivated by states rights rather than slavery.


Academic historians, in reaction to these claims, have totally dismissed the idea that more than a handful of African Americans could have served as Confederate soldiers. To suggest otherwise, they say, is to engage in “a pattern of distortion, deception, and deceit” in the use of evidence.

But according to African Americans themselves, writing during the war, thousands of blacks did fight as soldiers for the South. In my presentation, I assess and contextualize the sources, examine case studies of blacks fighting for the Confederacy, and explain how and why it happened and how Northern black leaders understood this phenomenon. Along the way I reveal the richly diverse ways in which blacks acted on their understandings of freedom."

John Stauffer Lectures on Black Confederates at Harvard CIVIL WAR MEMORY

John Stauffer Goes Looking For Black Confederates and Comes Up Empty Again CIVIL WAR MEMORY

Again, I ask where is the evidence that these men existed? Where are the military records that I assume Stauffer poured through in preparation for his talk and this essay?

In the end, what John Stauffer doesn’t seem to understand is that Confederate authorities (civilian and military) were very clear about who was and who was not a soldier. Stauffer, like the vast majority of neo-Confederates seem to have no problem trotting out Union accounts purporting to show that there were black soldiers in Confederate ranks.

I will issue the same challenge to Stauffer that I have to anyone who has made claims about the existence of black Confederate soldiers. Please find me one wartime account from a Confederate soldier, officer or politician who mentions that black men fought as soldiers in the army. I am not asking for fifty or one hundred, just one.

 

[Syriusly]

The only one promoting the 'myth' that the North invaded the South to free the slaves is you.

Again the board has caught you lying. Almost all TEXTBOOKS say the north was fighting to free the slaves. Real history books say otherwise.

Again the board has noted that you have failed to provide any proof of your claims- you are just once again pulling it out of your ass.

 

[Skylar]

[

Slavery was absolutely the cause of the civil war. As it was the cause of the south seceding and eventually waging war against the United States. .

HAHAHA. The south didn't wage war, you fool. They were invaded and defended themselves in a war entirely started by lincoln.

The South started the war by firing on American troops, and invaded the loyal states multiple times.

The Union fired the first shots at Pensecola's Ft Pickens


Fort Pickens - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

And the South only did counter-invasions in a vain effort to encourage the Union to keep troops home for defense.

You don't know what you are talking about.

Check your dates again. The 'attack' you speak of what on January 8th. Florida didn't secede until January 10th.

It wasn't an attack by the confederacy or against it. It was some local idiots who tried to burglarize Ft. Barrancas.

Yep, I stand corrected, it was Ft Barrancas. And they were not 'local idiots' as you put it but the local state militia coming to ask the surrender of the fort as secession was known to be imminent.

As they hadn't seceded, your argument is even hypothetically impossible. As even according to the Confederacy, a State is still part of the US until it secedes. Thus on January 8th, according to everyone, Florida was part of the US.

"After the war, R.L. Sweetman of Mobile, Alabama, informed Slemmer that he had been one of the men seen at the drawbridge that night. According to his version of events, word had reached parties of volunteers and militia forming in the area that the U.S. troops had evacuated Fort Barrancas. He went with a friend to see if the report was true, only to encounter the fire of the guards at the gate of the fort. No one was injured, but he and his comrade quickly ran to safety."

Civil War Florida January 8 1861 - Fort Barrancas and the First Shots of the War

First, your account isn't of a milita action. But a guy and his friend following a rumor.

Second, see above.

 

[Syriusly]

wow- excellent- 46% of South Carolina families owned at least one slave.
49% of Mississippi families owned at least one slave.

Sorry but no one believes those numbers. More like 10%

Hmm who to believe- the U.S. Census- or you pulling numbers out of your ass?

 

[Skylar]

The only one promoting the 'myth' that the North invaded the South to free the slaves is you.

Again the board has caught you lying. Almost all TEXTBOOKS say the north was fighting to free the slaves. Real history books say otherwise.

Again the board has noted that you have failed to provide any proof of your claims- you are just once again pulling it out of your ass.

So almost everyone says it. And almost all text books say it. But when asked to cite these textbooks and 'almost everyone'......Speedy quotes only himself.

Wow. How did I see that coming?

 

[JimBowie1958]

No one in their right mind can claim that upwards of 6,000 black men served as soldiers in Confederate ranks without having consulted specific military records.

And anyone that has done the slightest attempt to look at primary sources on the Civil War knows that there are many things that happen in all wars that are never documented. Records get destroyed, like what happened at the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, and some volunteers that serve in militia units are never documented officially but in other places like civilian courts years later.

The people at the time often relied on word of mouth from those they trusted instead of written records as would be the standard in the 20th century.

The fact is that a racially segregated South paid war pensions to black troops for years after the war.

That should be enough for any reasonable person to find convincing.

 

[Liminal]

wow- excellent- 46% of South Carolina families owned at least one slave.
49% of Mississippi families owned at least one slave.

Sorry but no one believes those numbers. More like 10%

What you believe doesn't matter since you have nothing to back it up with.

 

[JimBowie1958]

No- Lincoln never advocated the involuntary deportation of blacks- he proposed a plan for voluntary resettlement of American blacks to Africa and was surprised when he found out that they no more wanted to return to Africa than English Americans wanted to return to the place their ancestors came from 200 years before

And that's still true today. Blacks in america have a better life than they would have in africa. They bitch and bitch about america but they know that white means prosperity and black means poverty.

Thats what all the racists keep saying.

That all racists, which is bullshit, might say that blacks have better lives here in the US, does not prove that all who say it are racists.

Take a critical thinking course sometime.

In the mean time your hateful efforts to divide Americans along racial lines and prevent healing is going to be defeated. Your side is doomed due to the preponderance of idiots on your side.

 

[Skylar]

wow- excellent- 46% of South Carolina families owned at least one slave.
49% of Mississippi families owned at least one slave.

Sorry but no one believes those numbers. More like 10%

Hmm who to believe- the U.S. Census- or you pulling numbers out of your ass?

Oh, I get it. 'Everyone'...is Speedy citing himself. 'No one' is Speedy citing himself.

With Speedy claiming to speak for both 'everyone' and 'no one' .....do we even need to be here?

 

[Syriusly]

No one in their right mind can claim that upwards of 6,000 black men served as soldiers in Confederate ranks without having consulted specific military records.

And anyone that has done the slightest attempt to look at primary sources on the Civil War knows that there are many things that happen in all wars that are never documented. Records get destroyed, like what happened at the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, and some volunteers that serve in militia units are never documented officially but in other places like civilian courts years later.

The people at the time often relied on word of mouth from those they trusted instead of written records as would be the standard in the 20th century.

The fact is that a racially segregated South paid war pensions to black troops for years after the war.

That should be enough for any reasonable person to find convincing.

Then provide the records- or links to them.

As the very author you cited says:

I will issue the same challenge to Stauffer that I have to anyone who has made claims about the existence of black Confederate soldiers. Please find me one wartime account from a Confederate soldier, officer or politician who mentions that black men fought as soldiers in the army. I am not asking for fifty or one hundred, just one.

 

[JimBowie1958]

How could the war be about slavery when BOTH sides practiced slavery?. Yes - the Union had 4 slave states of its own, (ky md mo de) with a total of 400,000 slaves. The idea that lincoln wanted to free the slaves is absurd in light of that fact.

History is written by the victors and so, after the war, the North started the myth that they invaded the south to free the slaves.

Right. The PhD head of the history dept at the United States Military Academy at West Point is wrong and you're right.

4) Thousands of blacks fought for the South to defend their homes, regardless of slavery.

200,000 blacks fought for the North- a large amount of whom were escapted- and freed slaves.

Please provide some evidence that 'thousands of blacks' fought for the South- I have looked- and other than the slaves accompanying their masters into battle, I have found little documented evidence of free blacks fighting for the Confederacy.

“Black Confederates” is one of the most controversial ideas of the Civil War era and American memory more generally. Today, neo-Confederates claim that thousands of blacks loyally fought as soldiers for the South and that hundreds of thousands more served the Confederacy as laborers. These claims have become a staple among Southern heritage groups and are taught in some Southern schools. Their function is to purge t...he Confederacy from its association with slavery and redeem the white South from guilt over its past. In this they have been partly successful: according to a recent poll, 70% of white Southerners continue to believe that the Confederacy was motivated by states rights rather than slavery.


Academic historians, in reaction to these claims, have totally dismissed the idea that more than a handful of African Americans could have served as Confederate soldiers. To suggest otherwise, they say, is to engage in “a pattern of distortion, deception, and deceit” in the use of evidence.

But according to African Americans themselves, writing during the war, thousands of blacks did fight as soldiers for the South. In my presentation, I assess and contextualize the sources, examine case studies of blacks fighting for the Confederacy, and explain how and why it happened and how Northern black leaders understood this phenomenon. Along the way I reveal the richly diverse ways in which blacks acted on their understandings of freedom."

John Stauffer Lectures on Black Confederates at Harvard CIVIL WAR MEMORY

John Stauffer Goes Looking For Black Confederates and Comes Up Empty Again CIVIL WAR MEMORY

Again, I ask where is the evidence that these men existed? Where are the military records that I assume Stauffer poured through in preparation for his talk and this essay?

In the end, what John Stauffer doesn’t seem to understand is that Confederate authorities (civilian and military) were very clear about who was and who was not a soldier. Stauffer, like the vast majority of neo-Confederates seem to have no problem trotting out Union accounts purporting to show that there were black soldiers in Confederate ranks.

I will issue the same challenge to Stauffer that I have to anyone who has made claims about the existence of black Confederate soldiers. Please find me one wartime account from a Confederate soldier, officer or politician who mentions that black men fought as soldiers in the army. I am not asking for fifty or one hundred, just one.

Why golly gee, my second cousin Earl went looking for proof that Obama was an American and couldn't find it either, so wow, Obama must not be American, by your idiot logic.

 

[Syriusly]

No- Lincoln never advocated the involuntary deportation of blacks- he proposed a plan for voluntary resettlement of American blacks to Africa and was surprised when he found out that they no more wanted to return to Africa than English Americans wanted to return to the place their ancestors came from 200 years before

And that's still true today. Blacks in america have a better life than they would have in africa. They bitch and bitch about america but they know that white means prosperity and black means poverty.

Thats what all the racists keep saying.

That all racists, which is bullshit, might say that blacks have better lives here in the US, does not prove that all who say it are racists.

Take a critical thinking course sometime.

In the mean time your hateful efforts to divide Americans along racial lines and prevent healing is going to be defeated. Your side is doomed due to the preponderance of idiots on your side.

I am not the one claiming that one race is more intelligent than the other- that would be Speedy the Racist.

I have yet to see any evidence that you have any concept of what critical thinking is.

 

[JimBowie1958]

No one in their right mind can claim that upwards of 6,000 black men served as soldiers in Confederate ranks without having consulted specific military records.

And anyone that has done the slightest attempt to look at primary sources on the Civil War knows that there are many things that happen in all wars that are never documented. Records get destroyed, like what happened at the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, and some volunteers that serve in militia units are never documented officially but in other places like civilian courts years later.

The people at the time often relied on word of mouth from those they trusted instead of written records as would be the standard in the 20th century.

The fact is that a racially segregated South paid war pensions to black troops for years after the war.

That should be enough for any reasonable person to find convincing.

Then provide the records- or links to them.

As the very author you cited says:

I will issue the same challenge to Stauffer that I have to anyone who has made claims about the existence of black Confederate soldiers. Please find me one wartime account from a Confederate soldier, officer or politician who mentions that black men fought as soldiers in the army. I am not asking for fifty or one hundred, just one.

It is a fact that the South paid pensions to black veterans I don't have time to go dig it up so that you can just ignore it.

If you really want to know the Truth of the matter, then dig it up your own damned self. I really could not care less if you live under one more ideological nit wittery or not.

 

[Syriusly]

Right. The PhD head of the history dept at the United States Military Academy at West Point is wrong and you're right.

4) Thousands of blacks fought for the South to defend their homes, regardless of slavery.

200,000 blacks fought for the North- a large amount of whom were escapted- and freed slaves.

Please provide some evidence that 'thousands of blacks' fought for the South- I have looked- and other than the slaves accompanying their masters into battle, I have found little documented evidence of free blacks fighting for the Confederacy.

“Black Confederates” is one of the most controversial ideas of the Civil War era and American memory more generally. Today, neo-Confederates claim that thousands of blacks loyally fought as soldiers for the South and that hundreds of thousands more served the Confederacy as laborers. These claims have become a staple among Southern heritage groups and are taught in some Southern schools. Their function is to purge t...he Confederacy from its association with slavery and redeem the white South from guilt over its past. In this they have been partly successful: according to a recent poll, 70% of white Southerners continue to believe that the Confederacy was motivated by states rights rather than slavery.


Academic historians, in reaction to these claims, have totally dismissed the idea that more than a handful of African Americans could have served as Confederate soldiers. To suggest otherwise, they say, is to engage in “a pattern of distortion, deception, and deceit” in the use of evidence.

But according to African Americans themselves, writing during the war, thousands of blacks did fight as soldiers for the South. In my presentation, I assess and contextualize the sources, examine case studies of blacks fighting for the Confederacy, and explain how and why it happened and how Northern black leaders understood this phenomenon. Along the way I reveal the richly diverse ways in which blacks acted on their understandings of freedom."

John Stauffer Lectures on Black Confederates at Harvard CIVIL WAR MEMORY

John Stauffer Goes Looking For Black Confederates and Comes Up Empty Again CIVIL WAR MEMORY

Again, I ask where is the evidence that these men existed? Where are the military records that I assume Stauffer poured through in preparation for his talk and this essay?

In the end, what John Stauffer doesn’t seem to understand is that Confederate authorities (civilian and military) were very clear about who was and who was not a soldier. Stauffer, like the vast majority of neo-Confederates seem to have no problem trotting out Union accounts purporting to show that there were black soldiers in Confederate ranks.

I will issue the same challenge to Stauffer that I have to anyone who has made claims about the existence of black Confederate soldiers. Please find me one wartime account from a Confederate soldier, officer or politician who mentions that black men fought as soldiers in the army. I am not asking for fifty or one hundred, just one.

Why golly gee, my second cousin Earl went looking for proof that Obama was an American and couldn't find it either, so wow, Obama must not be American, by your idiot logic.

Same author you cited to support your claim.

And here you don't believe him.

 

[Syriusly]

No one in their right mind can claim that upwards of 6,000 black men served as soldiers in Confederate ranks without having consulted specific military records.

And anyone that has done the slightest attempt to look at primary sources on the Civil War knows that there are many things that happen in all wars that are never documented. Records get destroyed, like what happened at the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, and some volunteers that serve in militia units are never documented officially but in other places like civilian courts years later.

The people at the time often relied on word of mouth from those they trusted instead of written records as would be the standard in the 20th century.

The fact is that a racially segregated South paid war pensions to black troops for years after the war.

That should be enough for any reasonable person to find convincing.

Then provide the records- or links to them.

As the very author you cited says:

I will issue the same challenge to Stauffer that I have to anyone who has made claims about the existence of black Confederate soldiers. Please find me one wartime account from a Confederate soldier, officer or politician who mentions that black men fought as soldiers in the army. I am not asking for fifty or one hundred, just one.

It is a fact that the South paid pensions to black veterans I don't have time to go dig it up so that you can just ignore it.

If you really want to know the Truth of the matter, then dig it up your own damned self. I really could not care less if you live under one more ideological nit wittery or not.

So you have nothing to support your claim.

LOL....not a shock there.

 

[JimBowie1958]

HAHAHA. The south didn't wage war, you fool. They were invaded and defended themselves in a war entirely started by lincoln.

The South started the war by firing on American troops, and invaded the loyal states multiple times.

The Union fired the first shots at Pensecola's Ft Pickens


Fort Pickens - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

And the South only did counter-invasions in a vain effort to encourage the Union to keep troops home for defense.

You don't know what you are talking about.

Check your dates again. The 'attack' you speak of what on January 8th. Florida didn't secede until January 10th.

It wasn't an attack by the confederacy or against it. It was some local idiots who tried to burglarize Ft. Barrancas.

Yep, I stand corrected, it was Ft Barrancas. And they were not 'local idiots' as you put it but the local state militia coming to ask the surrender of the fort as secession was known to be imminent.

As they hadn't seceded, your argument is even hypothetically impossible. As even according to the Confederacy, a State is still part of the US until it secedes. Thus on January 8th, according to everyone, Florida was part of the US.

"After the war, R.L. Sweetman of Mobile, Alabama, informed Slemmer that he had been one of the men seen at the drawbridge that night. According to his version of events, word had reached parties of volunteers and militia forming in the area that the U.S. troops had evacuated Fort Barrancas. He went with a friend to see if the report was true, only to encounter the fire of the guards at the gate of the fort. No one was injured, but he and his comrade quickly ran to safety."

Civil War Florida January 8 1861 - Fort Barrancas and the First Shots of the War

First, your account isn't of a milita action. But a guy and his friend following a rumor.

Second, see above.

He was in the militia and the Union fired on him and his friends.

Proof positive the Union fired first, though I know you don't like it.

Shots in wars are often fired just before the commencement of official hostilities and shortly afterwards as well. These casualties are still considered part of the war casualties and monies paid out.

 

[Liminal]

No one in their right mind can claim that upwards of 6,000 black men served as soldiers in Confederate ranks without having consulted specific military records.

And anyone that has done the slightest attempt to look at primary sources on the Civil War knows that there are many things that happen in all wars that are never documented. Records get destroyed, like what happened at the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, and some volunteers that serve in militia units are never documented officially but in other places like civilian courts years later.

The people at the time often relied on word of mouth from those they trusted instead of written records as would be the standard in the 20th century.

The fact is that a racially segregated South paid war pensions to black troops for years after the war.

That should be enough for any reasonable person to find convincing.

Convincing of what? There were no actual black confederate military units, many Confederate officers brought one or two slaves with them to serve as personal servants. Some of those slaves were armed and fought to protect their masters. They were evidently the most severe cases of Stockholm syndrome ever recorded. Beyond that there were only black labor battalions used to construct fortifications, roads etc. None of them were armed. Black Confederate soldier is a mischaracterization.

 

[JimBowie1958]

4) Thousands of blacks fought for the South to defend their homes, regardless of slavery.

200,000 blacks fought for the North- a large amount of whom were escapted- and freed slaves.

Please provide some evidence that 'thousands of blacks' fought for the South- I have looked- and other than the slaves accompanying their masters into battle, I have found little documented evidence of free blacks fighting for the Confederacy.

“Black Confederates” is one of the most controversial ideas of the Civil War era and American memory more generally. Today, neo-Confederates claim that thousands of blacks loyally fought as soldiers for the South and that hundreds of thousands more served the Confederacy as laborers. These claims have become a staple among Southern heritage groups and are taught in some Southern schools. Their function is to purge t...he Confederacy from its association with slavery and redeem the white South from guilt over its past. In this they have been partly successful: according to a recent poll, 70% of white Southerners continue to believe that the Confederacy was motivated by states rights rather than slavery.


Academic historians, in reaction to these claims, have totally dismissed the idea that more than a handful of African Americans could have served as Confederate soldiers. To suggest otherwise, they say, is to engage in “a pattern of distortion, deception, and deceit” in the use of evidence.

But according to African Americans themselves, writing during the war, thousands of blacks did fight as soldiers for the South. In my presentation, I assess and contextualize the sources, examine case studies of blacks fighting for the Confederacy, and explain how and why it happened and how Northern black leaders understood this phenomenon. Along the way I reveal the richly diverse ways in which blacks acted on their understandings of freedom."

John Stauffer Lectures on Black Confederates at Harvard CIVIL WAR MEMORY

John Stauffer Goes Looking For Black Confederates and Comes Up Empty Again CIVIL WAR MEMORY

Again, I ask where is the evidence that these men existed? Where are the military records that I assume Stauffer poured through in preparation for his talk and this essay?

In the end, what John Stauffer doesn’t seem to understand is that Confederate authorities (civilian and military) were very clear about who was and who was not a soldier. Stauffer, like the vast majority of neo-Confederates seem to have no problem trotting out Union accounts purporting to show that there were black soldiers in Confederate ranks.

I will issue the same challenge to Stauffer that I have to anyone who has made claims about the existence of black Confederate soldiers. Please find me one wartime account from a Confederate soldier, officer or politician who mentions that black men fought as soldiers in the army. I am not asking for fifty or one hundred, just one.

Why golly gee, my second cousin Earl went looking for proof that Obama was an American and couldn't find it either, so wow, Obama must not be American, by your idiot logic.

Same author you cited to support your claim.

And here you don't believe him.

I believe he didn't find what he was looking for, but I know that does not prove there were non such.

 

[JimBowie1958]

No one in their right mind can claim that upwards of 6,000 black men served as soldiers in Confederate ranks without having consulted specific military records.

And anyone that has done the slightest attempt to look at primary sources on the Civil War knows that there are many things that happen in all wars that are never documented. Records get destroyed, like what happened at the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, and some volunteers that serve in militia units are never documented officially but in other places like civilian courts years later.

The people at the time often relied on word of mouth from those they trusted instead of written records as would be the standard in the 20th century.

The fact is that a racially segregated South paid war pensions to black troops for years after the war.

That should be enough for any reasonable person to find convincing.

Then provide the records- or links to them.

As the very author you cited says:

I will issue the same challenge to Stauffer that I have to anyone who has made claims about the existence of black Confederate soldiers. Please find me one wartime account from a Confederate soldier, officer or politician who mentions that black men fought as soldiers in the army. I am not asking for fifty or one hundred, just one.

It is a fact that the South paid pensions to black veterans I don't have time to go dig it up so that you can just ignore it.

If you really want to know the Truth of the matter, then dig it up your own damned self. I really could not care less if you live under one more ideological nit wittery or not.

So you have nothing to support your claim.

LOL....not a shock there.

I have seen the documentation but I have no desire to go on another wild goose chase for a libtard troll who can find these facts of the public domain himself.

 

[Liminal]

No one in their right mind can claim that upwards of 6,000 black men served as soldiers in Confederate ranks without having consulted specific military records.

And anyone that has done the slightest attempt to look at primary sources on the Civil War knows that there are many things that happen in all wars that are never documented. Records get destroyed, like what happened at the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, and some volunteers that serve in militia units are never documented officially but in other places like civilian courts years later.

The people at the time often relied on word of mouth from those they trusted instead of written records as would be the standard in the 20th century.

The fact is that a racially segregated South paid war pensions to black troops for years after the war.

That should be enough for any reasonable person to find convincing.

Then provide the records- or links to them.

As the very author you cited says:

I will issue the same challenge to Stauffer that I have to anyone who has made claims about the existence of black Confederate soldiers. Please find me one wartime account from a Confederate soldier, officer or politician who mentions that black men fought as soldiers in the army. I am not asking for fifty or one hundred, just one.

It is a fact that the South paid pensions to black veterans I don't have time to go dig it up so that you can just ignore it.

If you really want to know the Truth of the matter, then dig it up your own damned self. I really could not care less if you live under one more ideological nit wittery or not.

So you have nothing to support your claim.

LOL....not a shock there.

I have seen the documentation but I have no desire to go on another wild goose chase for a libtard troll who can find these facts of the public domain himself.

Convenient.